


Thousand Years of Buried Memories

by Flogið eins og fiðrildi (LucidDreamer777), LucidDreamer777



Series: Miscellaneous Works [1]
Category: Lost Odyssey
Genre: Alcohol, Canon, Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Death, Culture, Drug Use, F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology, Infidelity, Language, Memories, Other, Philosophy, Repressed Memories, Suggestive Themes, Suicide, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 33
Words: 77,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25878154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucidDreamer777/pseuds/Flogi%C3%B0%20eins%20og%20fi%C3%B0rildi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucidDreamer777/pseuds/LucidDreamer777
Summary: A collection of the short stories found within Lost Odyssey. These stories are also known as the "A Thousand Years of Dreams", depicting a number of characters' memories of their journeys throughout their immortal lives. Each and every one is found within the game and requires special means to obtain them. This is count as a strange mix of a "canon" fic and an archive-style fanfiction.
Series: Miscellaneous Works [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885792





	1. Hanna's Departure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Milkweed (LostinStatic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostinStatic/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Thousand Years of Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8789380) by [Milkweed (LostinStatic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostinStatic/pseuds/Milkweed). 



> This is to finish what is left from the previous "canon" fic "A Thousand Years of Dreams", created and left by its author Milkweed. As such, the idea belongs to the author and everything not owned by me in this archive fic belongs to their owners.
> 
> But if you happen to see a random Khent nude, drooling by the lips, randomly attacking people and hates taking baths, please contact your local Khent support center, branching either Urha, Gohtza, Numara, Khent or any existing location. Rabies causes 17,400 deaths to Humans, Khents and other races in the world annually and the Khent are seeking ways to eradicate it fully to provide a brighter future for not just their pups, but to the children around the world as well. For more information, contact with us in our website: www.khentrabies.org

The family members have tears in their eyes when they welcome Kaim back to the Inn from his long journey.

"Thank you so much for coming." He understands the situation immediately.

The time for departure is drawing near.

Too soon, too soon. But still, he knows, this day would have to come sometime, and not in the distant future.

"I might never see you again," she said to him with a sad smile when he left on his journey, her smiling face almost transparent in its whiteness, so fragile - and therefore indescribably beautiful - as she lay in bed.

"May I see Hanna now?" he asks.

The innkeeper gives him a tiny nod and says, "I don't think she'll know who you are, though." She hasn't opened her eyes since last night, he warns Kaim. You can tell from the slight movement of her chest that she is clinging to a frail thread of life, but it could snap at any moment.

"It's such a shame. I know you made a special point to come here for her..."

Another tear glides down the wife's cheek.

"Never mind, it's fine," Kaim says.

He had been present at innumerable deaths and his experience has taught him much. Death takes away the power of speech first of all. Then the ability to see. What remains alive to the very end, however, is the power to _hear_. Even though the person has lost consciousness, it is by no means unusual for the voices of the family to bring forth smiles or tears.

Kaim puts his arm around the woman's shoulder and says,

"I have lots of travel stories to tell her. I've been looking forward to this my whole time on the road."

Instead of smiling, the woman releases another large tear and nods to Kaim. 

"And Hanna was so looking forward to hearing your stories." 

Her sobs almost drown out her words. The innkeeper says, "I wish I could urge you to rest up from your travels before you see her, but..." Kaim ignores his apologies, 

"Of course I'll see her right away."

There is very little time left.

Hanna, the only daughter of the innkeeper and his wife, will probably breathe her last before the sun comes up. Kaim lowers his pack to the floor and quietly opens the door to Hanna's room. 

Hanna was frail from birth. Far from enjoying the opportunity to travel, she rarely left the town or even the neighborhood in which she was born and raised. This child will probably not live to adulthood, the doctor told her parents. To this tiny girl with extraordinarily beautiful, doll-like features, the gods had dealt and all-too-sad destiny.

That they had allowed her to be born the only daughter of the keepers of a small inn by the highway was perhaps one small act of atonement for such iniquity. Hanna was unable to go anywhere, but the guests who stayed at her parents' inn would tell her stories of the countries and towns and landscapes and people that she would never know. 

Whenever new guests arrived at the inn, Hanna would ask them,

"Where are you from?" "Where are you going?" "Can you tell me a story?"

She would sit and listen to their stories with sparkling eyes, urging them on to new episodes with "And then? And then?" When they left the inn, she would beg them, " _Please_ come back, and tell me lots and lots of stories about far away countries!"

She would stand there waving until the person disappeared far down the highway, give one lonely sigh, and go back to bed.

Hanna is sound asleep.

No one else is in the room, perhaps an indication that she has long since passed the stage when the doctors can do anything for her.

Kaim sits down in the chair next to the bed and says with a smile,

"Hello Hanna, I'm back."

She does not respond. Her little chest, still without the swelling of a grown woman, rises and falls almost imperceptibly.

"I went far across the ocean this time," he tells her. "The ocean on the side where the sun comes up. I took a boat from the harbor way way way far beyond the mountains you can see from this window, and I was on the sea from the time the moon was perfectly round till it got smaller and smaller and them bigger and bigger until it was full again. There was nothing but ocean as far at the eye could see. Just the sea and the sky. Can you imagine it, Hanna?" You've never seen the ocean, but I'm sure people have told you about it. It's like a huge, big endless puddle."

Kaim chuckles to himself, and it seems to him that Hanna's pale white cheek moves slightly.

She can hear him. Even if she cannot speak or see, her ears are still alive.

Believing and hoping this to be true, Kaim continues with the story of his travels.

He speaks no words of parting.

As always with Hanna, Kaim smiles with a special gentleness he has never shown to anyone else, and he goes on telling his tales with a bright voice, sometimes even accompanying his story with exaggerated gestures.

He tells her about the blue ocean.

He tells her about the blue sky.

He says nothing about the violent sea battle that stained the ocean red.

He never tells her about those things.

Hanna was a tiny girl when Kaim first visited the inn.

When she asked him "Where are you from?" and "Will you tell me some stories?" with her childish pronunciation and innocent smile, Kaim felt a soft glow in his chest. At the time, he was returning from a battle.

More precisely, he had ended one battle and was on his way to the next.

His life consisted of travelling from one battlefield to another, and nothing about that has changed to this day.

He has taken the lives of countless enemy troops, and witnessed the deaths of countless comrades on the battlefield. Moreover, the only thing separating enemies from comrades is the slightest stroke of fortune. Had the gears of destiny turned in a slightly different way, his enemies would have been comrades and his comrades enemies. This is the fate of the mercenary.

He was spiritually worn down back then and feeling unbearably lonely.

As a possessor of eternal life, Kaim had no fear of death, which is precisely why each of the soldiers' faces distorted in fear, and why each man who died in agony was burned permanently into his brain.

Ordinarily, he would spend his nights on the road drinking, immersing himself in an alcoholic stupor - or pretending to - he was trying to make himself forget the unforgettable.

When, however, he saw Hanna's smile as she begged him for stories about his long journey, he felt a far warmer and deeper comfort than he could ever have obtained from liquor.

He told her many things...

About a beautiful flower he discovered on the battlefield.

About the bewitching beauty of the mist filling the forest the night before the final battle.

About the marvellous taste of the spring water in a ravine where he and his men had fled after a losing battle.

About a vast, bottomless sky he saw after a battle.

He never told her anything sad. He kept his mouth shut about the human ugliness and stupidity he witnessed endlessly on the battlefield. He concealed his position as a mercenary from her, kept silent regarding his reasons for travelling constantly, and spoke only of things that were beautiful and sweet and lovely.

He sees now that he told Hanna only beautiful stories of the road like this not so much out of concern for her purity, but for his own sake.

Staying in the inn where Hanna waited to see him turned out to be one of Kaim's small pleasures in life. Telling her about the memories he brought back from his journeys, he felt some degree of salvation, however slight.

Five years, ten years, his friendship with the girl continued. Little by little, she neared adulthood, which meant that, as the doctors had predicted, each day brought her that much closer to death.

And now, Kaim ends the last travel story he will share with her.

He can never see her again, can never tell her stories again.

Before dawn, when the darkness of night is at its deepest, long pauses enter into Hanna's breathing.

The frail thread of life is about to snap as Kaim and her parents watch over her.

The tiny light that has lodged in Kaim's breast will be extinguished.

His lonely travels will begin again tomorrow - His long, long travels without end.

"You'll be leaving on travels of your own soon, Hanna," Kaim tells her gently.

"You'll be leaving for a world that no one knows, a world that has never entered into any of the stories you have heard so far. Finally, you will be able to leave your bed and walk anywhere you want to go. You'll be free."

He wants her to know that death is not sorrow but a joy mixed with tears.

"It's your turn now. Be sure and tell everyone about the memories of your journey."

Her parents will make that same journey someday. And someday Hanna will be able to meet all the guests she had known at the inn, far beyond the sky.

_I, however, can never go there._

_I can never escape this world,_

_I can never see you again._

"This is not goodbye. It's just the start of your journey."

He speaks his final words to her.

"We'll meet again."

His final lie to her.

Hanna makes her departure.

Her face is transfixed with a tranquil smile as if she just said, "See you soon."

Her eyes will never open again. A single tear glides slowly down her cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Dying of young age is not a fictional dramatic plot device, it exists in real life. If the cause of having weakened body is without any known cause, it can either be of unknown cause or a genetic disorder. Being born with a frail body can be an indication that he/she is born with a disorder that causes poor immune or metabolic system, which will be fatal in the long run.
> 
> If you have a family history of your family members having random sickness that is passed down to others, be sure to have a genetic testing to be informed on what genetic disease you could carry as well as instructions from your doctor so that the disorder's effects can be minimized and allowing you to have better lives.


	2. A Hero's Return

Alone in a crowd of rugged men, nursing his drink in the far corner of the old post town's only tavern: Kaim.

A single man strides in through the tavern door. Massively built, he wears the garb of a warrior. His soiled uniform bespeaks a long journey. Fatigue marks his face, but his eyes wear a penetrating gleam--the look of a fighting man on active duty.

The tavern's din hushes instantly. Every drunken eye in the place fastens on the solder with awe and gratitude.

The long war with the neighboring country has ended at last, and the men who fought on the front lines are returning to their homes. So it is with this military man.

The soldier takes a seat at the table next to Kaim's, and downs a slug of liquor with the forcefulness of a hard drinker--a man who drinks to kill his pain.

Two cups, three, four...

Another customer approaches him, bottle in hand, wearing an ingratiating grin--a typical crafty town punk.

"Let me offer you a drink," wheedles the man, "as a token of gratitude for your heroic efforts on behalf of the fatherland."

The soldier unsmilingly allows the man to fill his cup.

"How was it at the front? I'm sure you performed many valiant deeds on the battlefield."

The soldier empties his cup in silence.

The punk refills the cup and adopts an ever more fawning smile.

"Now that we're friends, how about telling me some war tales?

You've got such big, strong arms, how many enemy soldiers did you ki---"

Without a word, the soldier hurls the contents of his cup unto the man's face.

The punk flies into a rage and draws his knife.

No sooner does it leave its sheath than Kaim's fist sends it flying through the air.

Faced with the powerful united front of Kaim and the soldier, the punk runs out muttering curses.

The two big men watch him go, then share a faint smile. Kaim doesn't have to speak with the soldier to know that he lives in deep sadness. For his part, the soldier (having cheated death any number of times) is aware of the shadow that lurks in Kaim's expression.

The tavern's din returns.

Kaim and the soldier pour each other drinks.

"I've got a wife and daughter I haven't seen since I shipped out." says the soldier. "It's been three long years."

He lets himself smile shyly now for the first time as he takes a photograph of his wife and daughter from his pocket and shows it to Kaim: the wife a woman of dewy freshness, the daughter still very young.

"They're the reason I survived.

The thought of going home to them alive was all that sustained me in battle."

"Is your home far from here?"

"No, my village is just over the next pass. I'm sure they've heard the news that the war is over and can hardly wait to have me home."

He could get there tonight if he wanted too badly enough. It was that close.

"But..." the soldier downs a mouthful of liquor and groans,

"I'm afraid."

"Afraid? Of what?"

"I want to see my wife and daughter, but I'm afraid to have them see me.

I don't know how many men I've killed these past three years. I had no choice. I had to do it to stay alive. If I was going to get back to my family, I had no choice but to kill one enemy soldier after another, and each and every one of those men had families they had left at home."

It was the code of war, the soldier's destiny.

To stay alive in battle, you had to go on killing men before they could kill you.

"I had no time to think about such things at the front. I was too busy trying to survive. I see it now, though--now that the war is over. Three years of sin are carved into my face. This is the face of a killer. I don't want to show this face to my wife and daughter."

The soldier pulls out a leather pouch from which he withdraws a small stone.

He tells Kaim it is an unpolished gemstone, something he found shortly after he left for the battlefield.

"A gemstone?" Kaim asked, unconvinced. The stone on the table is a dull black without a hint of the gleam a gem should have.

"It sparkles when I first found it. I was sure my daughter would love it when I brought it home to her."

Gradually, though, the stone lost its gleam and turned cloudy.

"Every time I killed an enemy soldier, something like the stain of his blood would rise to the surface of the stone. As you can see, it's almost solid black now after three years. The stone is stained by the sins I've committed. I call it my 'sin stone.'"

"You don't have to blame yourself so harshly," says Kaim. "You had to do it to stay alive."

"I know that," says the soldier. "I know that. But still...just like me, the men I killed had villages to go home to, and families waiting for them there..."

The soldier then says to Kaim, "You, too, I suppose. You must have a family."

Kaim gives his head a little shake. "Not me," he says. "No family."

"A home village at least?"

"I don't have any place to go home to."

"Eternal traveler, eh?"

"Uh-huh. That's me."

The soldier chuckles softly and gives Kaim a sour smile. It is hard to tell how fully he believes what Kaim has told him. He slips the "sin stone" into the leather pouch and says, "You know what I think? If the stone turned darker every time I took a life, it ought to get some of its gleam back every time I _save_ a life."

Instead of answering, Kaim drains the last drops of liquor from his cup and rises from the table. The soldier remains in his chair and Kaim, staring down at him, offers him these words of advice:

"If you have a place you can go home to, you should go to it. Just go, no matter how much guilt you may have weighing you down. I'm sure your wife and daughter will understand. You're no criminal. You're a hero: you fought your heart out to stay alive."

"I'm glad I met you." says the soldier. "I needed to hear that."

He holds his right hand out to Kaim, who grasps it in return.

"I hope your travels go well," says the soldier.

"And _your_ travels will soon be over," says Kaim with a smile, starting for the door.

Just then the punk charges at Kaim from behind, wielding a pistol.

"Watch out!" bellow the soldier and rushes after Kaim.

As Kaim whirls around, the punk takes aim and shouts, "You can't treat _me_ like that, you son of a bitch!"

The soldier flies between the two men...

...and takes a bullet in the gut.

And so, as he so desperately wished to do, the soldier has saved someone's life.

Ironically, it is for the life of Kaim, a man who can neither age nor die, that the soldier has traded his one and only life.

Sprawled on the floor, nearly unconscious, the soldier thrusts the leather pouch into Kaim's hand.

"Look at my sin stone, will you?

Maybe... maybe," he says, chuckling weakly, "...some of its shine has come back."

Blood spurts from his mouth, strangling the laugh.

Kaim looks inside the bag and says, "It's sparkling now. It's clean."

"It is?" gasps the soldier. "Good... My daughter... will be so glad..."

He smiles with satisfaction and holds his hand out for the pouch.

Gently, Kaim lays the pouch on the palm of his hand and folds the man's fingers over it.

The soldier draws his last breath, and the pouch falls to the floor.

The dead man's face wears a peaceful expression.

The stone, however--the man's 'sin stone', which has rolled from the open pouch--is as black as ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTES: Bar (or tavern) fights are common now and then, even in modern times. Due to drunken stupor, the participants will end up fighting each other with whatever they can grab with. It is also not uncommon for the participants to bring lethal objects in the fight such as broken bottles, knives or even guns, which results to either participants suffering from minor to major injuries and even deaths.
> 
> DEFINITION:
> 
> Din - a loud, unpleasant, and prolonged noise.  
> Example: "The tavern's din returns."


	3. White Flowers

Lovely white flowers mark the town. They bloom on every street corner, not in beds or fields set aside for their cultivation, but blending naturally and in profusion with every row of houses, as though the buildings and the blossoms have grown up together.

The season is early spring and snow still lingers on the nearby mountains, but the stretch of ocean that gently laps the town's southern shore is bathed in refulgent sunlight.

This is an old and prosperous harbor town.

Even now, each day, its piers see many cruise ships and freighters come and go.

Its history, however, is sharply divided between the time "before" and the time "after" an event that happened one day long ago.

People here prefer not to talk about it--the watershed engraved upon the town's chronology.

The memories are too sorrowful to make stories out of them.

Kaim knows this, and because he knows it, he has come here once again.

* * *

* * *

"Passing through?" the tavern master asks him.

At the sound of his voice, Kaim responds with a faint smile.

"You're here for the festival, I suppose. You should take your time and enjoy it."

The man is in high spirits. He has joined his customers in glass after glass until now and is quite red in the face, but no one shows any signs of blaming him for overindulging. Every seat in the tavern is filled and the air reverberates with laughter. Happy voices can be heard now and then as well from the road outside.

The entire town is celebrating. Once each year, the festival has people making merry all night long until the sun comes up.

"I hope you've got a room for the night, Sir. Too late to find one now! Every inn is full to overflowing."

"So it seems."s

"Not that anyone would be foolish enough to spend a night like this quietly tucked away under the covers in his room."

The tavern master winks at Kaim as if to say "Not _you_ , Sir. I'm sure!"

"Tonight, we're going to have the biggest, wildest party you've ever seen, and everybody's invited--locals or not. Drink, food, gambling, women: just let me know what you want. I'll make sure you have it."

Kaim sips his drink and says nothing.

Because he is planning to stay awake all night, he has not taken a room--though he has no plans to enjoy the festival, either.

Kaim will be offering up a prayer at the hour before dawn when the night is at its darkest and deepest. He will leave the town, sent off by the morning sun as it pokes its face up between the mountains and the sea. Just as he did the time of his last visit. Back then, the tavern master, who a few minutes ago was telling one of his regular customers that his first grandchild is about to be born, was himself just an infant.

"This one's one. Drink up!" says the tavern master, filling Kaim's shot glass.

He peers at Kaim suspiciously and says, "You _did_ come for the festival, didn't you?"

"No, not really." says Kaim.

"Don't tell me you didn't know about it! You mean you came here by pure chance?"

"Afraid so."

"Well, if you came here on business, forget it. You'll never get serious talk out of anybody on a special night like this."

The tavern master goes on to explain what is so special about this night.

"You must've heard _something_ about it. Once, a long, long time ago, this town was almost completely destroyed."

* * *

* * *

There are two kinds of events that divide history into "before" and "after": one is the birth or death of some great personage--a hero or a savior.

The other is something like a war or plague or natural disaster.

What divided this town's history into "before" and "after" was a violent earthquake.

It happened without warning and gave the soundly sleeping people of the town no chance to flee.

A crack opened up in the earth with a roar, and roads and buildings just fell to pieces.

Fires started, and they spread in the twinkling of an eye.

Almost everyone was killed.

* * *

* * *

"You probably can't imagine it. All _I_ know is what they taught me in school. And what does 'Resurrection Festival' means to a kid? It was just something that happened 'once upon a time.' I _live_ here and that's all it means to me, so a traveler like you probably can't even begin to imagine what it was like."

"Is that what they call this holiday? Resurrection Festival?"

"Uh-huh. The town was resurrected from a total ruin to this. That's what the celebration is all about."

Kaim gives the man a grim smile and sips his liqour.

"What's so funny?" the tavern master asks.

"Last time I was here, they were calling it 'Earthquake Memorial Day.' It wasn't a festival for this kind of wild celebrating."

"What are you talking about It's been the 'Resurrection Festival' ever since I was a kid."

"That was before you were old enough to remember anything."

"Huh?"

"And before that, they called it 'Consolation of the Spirits.' They'd burn a candle for each person who died, and pray for them to rest in peace. It was a sad festival. Lots of crying."

"You sound as if you saw it happening yourself."

"I did."

The tavern master laughs with a loud snort.

"You _look_ sober, but you must be plastered out of your mind! Now listen, it's a festival night, so I'm going to let you off the hook for pulling my leg, but don't say stuff like that in front of the other townspeople. All of our ancestors--mine included--are the ones who barely escaped with their lives."

Kaim knows full well what he is doing. He never expected the man to believe him.

He just wanted to find out himself whether the townspeople were still handing down the memories of the tragedy--whether, deep down behind their laughing faces, there still lingered the sorrow that had been passed down from their forefathers' time.

Called away by one of his other customers, the tavern master leaves Kaim's side, but not without first delivering a warning.

"Be careful what you say, Sir. That kind of nonsense can get you in trouble. Really. Think about it: the earthquake happened all of two hundred years ago!"

Kaim does not answer him

Instead, he sips his liquor in silence.

Among the ones who died in the tragedy two hundred years ago were his wife and daughter.

Of all the dozens of wives and hundreds of children that Kaim has had in his eternal life, the wife and child he had here were especially unforgettable.

* * *

* * *

In those days, Kaim had a job at the harbor.

There were just the three of them--he, his wife, and their little girl. They lived simply and happily.

The same kind of days that had preceded today would continue on into endless tomorrows. Everyone in the town believed that--including Kaim's wife and daughter, of course.

But Kaim knew differently. Precisely because his own life was long without end and he had consequently tasted the pain of countless partings. Kaim knew all too well that in the daily life of humans, there was no "forever".

This life his family was leading would have to end sometime. It could not go on unchanged. This was by no means a cause for sorrow, however. Denied a grasp upon "forever," human beings knew how to love and cherish the here and now.

Kaim especially loved to show his daughter flowers--the more fragile and short-lived the better.

Flowers that bloomed with the morning sun and scattered before the sun went down. They were everywhere in this harbor town: lovely, white flowers that bloomed in early spring.

His daughter loved the flowers. She was a gentle child who would never break off blossoms that had struggled so bravely to bloom. Instead, she simply watched them for hours at a time.

That year, too...

"Look how big the buds are! They'll be blooming any time now!" she said happily when she found the white flowers on the road near the house.

"Tomorrow, maybe?" Kaim wondered aloud.

"Absolutely!" his wife chimed in merrily. "Get up early tomorrow morning and have a look!"

"Poor little flowers, though." said the daughter. "It's nice when they bloom, but then they wither right away."

"All the better," said Kaim's wife. "It's good luck if you get to see them blooming. That makes it more fun."

"It may be fun for us," answered the girl. "But think about the poor flowers. They work so hard to open up, and they wither that same day. It's sad..."

"Well, yes. I guess so..."

A momentary air of sadness flowed into the room, but Kaim quickly dispelled it with a laugh.

"Happiness is not the same thing as 'longevity'!" he proclaimed.

"What does that mean, Papa?"

"It may not bloom for long, but the flower's happy if it can open up the prettiest blossom and give off the sweetest perfume it knows how to make while it _is_ blooming."

The girl seemed to be having trouble grasping this and simply nodded with a little sigh. She then broke into a smile and said, "It must be true if you say so, Papa!"

_Your smile is more beautiful than any flower in full bloom._

He should have said it to her.

Kaim later regretted that he had not.

The words he _had_ uttered so carelessly, he came to realize, turned out to be something of a prophecy.

"Well now, young lady," he said, "If you're getting up early to see the the lowers tomorrow morning, you'd better go to bed right now."

"All right, Papa. If I really have to..."

"I'm going to bed now, too." said Kaim's wife.

"Okay, then. G'nite, Papa."

His wife said to Kaim, "Good night, dear. I really am going to bed now."

"Good night," Kaim replied, enjoying one last cup to ease the day's fatigue.

These turned out to be the last words the family shared.

* * *

A violent earthquake struck the town before dawn.

Kaim's house collapsed in a heap of rubble.

Kaim's two loved ones departed for that distant other world before they could awaken from their deep sleep and without ever having had a chance to say "Good morning" to him.

The morning sun rose on a town that had been destroyed in an instant.

Amid the rubble, the flowers were blooming--the white flowers that Kaim's daughter had wanted so badly to see.

Kaim thought to lay a flower in offering on his daughter's cold corpse, but abandoned the idea.

He could not bring himself to pick a flower.

No one--no living being on the face of the earth, he realized--had the right to snatch the life of a flower that possessed that life for only one short day.

Kaim could never say to his daughter, "You go first to Heaven and wait for me: I'll be there before long."

Nor would he ever know the joy of reunion with his loved ones.

To live for a thousand years meant bearing the pain of a thousand years of partings.

Kaim continued his long journey.

A dizzying number of years and months flowed by: years and months during which numberless wars and calamities scourged the earth. People were born, and they died. They loved each other and were parted from the ones they loved. There were joys beyond measure, and sorrows just as measureless. People fought and argued without end, but they also loved and forgave each other endlessly. Thus was history built up as the tears of the past evolved gradually into prayers for the future.

Kaim continued his long journey.

After a while, he rarely thought about the wife and daughter with whom he had spent those few short days in the harbor town. But he never forget them.

Kaim continued his long journey.

And in the course of his travels, he stopped by this harbor town again.

* * *

* * *

As the night deepened, the din of the crowds only increased, but now, as a hint of light comes into the eastern sky, without a signal from anyone, the noise gives way to silence.

Kaim has been standing in the town's central square. The revelers, too, have found their way here one at a time, until, almost before he knows it, the stone-paved plaza is filled with people.

Kaim feels a tap on the shoulder.

"I didn't expect to find _you_ here!" says the tavern master.

When Kaim gives him a silent smile, the tavern master looks somewhat embarrassed and says, "There's something I forgot to tell you before..."

"Oh...?"

"Well, you know, the earthquake happened a _long_ time ago. Before my father and mother's time, even before my grandparents' generation. It might sound funny for me to say this, but I can't _imagine_ this town in ruins."

"I know what you mean."

"I do think, though, that there are probably things in this world that you can remember even if you haven't actually experienced them. Like the earthquake: I haven't forgotten it. And I'm not the only one. It may have happened two hundred years ago, but nobody in this town has ever forgotten it. We can't imagine it, but we can't forget it, either."

Just as Kaim nods again to signal his understanding of the tavern keeper's words, a somber melody echoes throughout the square. This is the hour when the earthquake destroyed the town.

All the people assembled here close their eyes, clasp their hands together, and offer up a prayer, the tavern master and Kaim among them.

To Kaim's closed eyes come the smiling faces of his dead wife and daughter. Why are they so beautiful and so sad, these faces that believe with all their hearts that tomorrow is sure to come?

The music ends.

The morning sun climbs above the horizon.

And everywhere throughout the town bloom countless white flowers.

* * *

In two hundred years, the white flowers have changed.

The scientists have hypothesized that "The earthquake may have changed the nature of the soil itself," but no one knows the cause for sure.

The lives of the flowers have lengthened.

Where before they would bloom and wither in the space of a single day, now they hold their blooms for three and four days at a time.

Moistened by the dew of night, bathed in the light of the sun, the white flowers strive to live their lives to the fullest, beautifying the town as if striving to live out the portion of life denied to those whose "tomorrows" were snatched away from them forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Many festivals and holidays in real life have dark or different origins, and most of them happen to the popular holidays and even religious holidays. Either years of distortion or being hijacked by the dominant religion, it is not uncommon for the original spirit of the holiday to be replaced by the sanitized, altered, socially acceptable or bastardized versions of their respective holidays.


	4. In The Mind of a Captive

He knows that it is useless.

But he can't suppress the impulse that wells up from within his own flesh.

He needs to do it--to hurl his entire body against the bars.

It does no good at all. His flesh simply bounces off the thick iron bars.

"Number 8! What the hell are you doing?"

The guard's angry shout echoes down the corridor.

The prisoners are never called by name, only by the numbers on their cells. Kaim is Number 8.

Kaim says nothing. Instead, he slams his shoulder against the bars.

The massive bars of iron never budge. All they do is leave a dull, heavy ache in Kaim's superbly conditioned muscles and bones.

Now, instead of shouting again, the guard blows his whistle, and the other guards some running from their station.

"Number 8! What's it going to take to make you understand?"

"Do you want to be thrown into the punishment cell?"

"Don't look at me like that. Start resisting, and all it will get you is a longer time in here!"

Sitting on the floor of his cell, legs splayed out, Kaim ignores the guards' shouts.

He has been to the punishment room any number of times. He knows he has been branded a "highly rebellious prisoner."

But he can't help himself.

Something is squirming deep down inside him.

Some hot thing trapped inside there is seething and writhing.

"Some war hero _you_ turned out to be!" says on guard.

"You can't do shit in here. What's the matter, soldier boy? Can't do anything without an enemy staring you in the face?"

The guard next to him taunts Kaim with laughter.

"Too bad for you, buddy, no enemies in here. Nobody from your side, either. We've got you locked up all by yourself."

After the guards leave, Kaim curls up on the floor, hugging his knees, eyes clamped tight.

_All by myself--_

_The guard was right._

_I thought I was used to living alone. In battle, on the road._

_But the loneliness here in prison is deeper than any I've every experienced before._

_And more frightening._

Walls on three sides, and beyond the bars nothing but another wall enclosing the narrow corridor.

This dungeon was built so as to prevent prisoners from seeing each other, or even to sense each others' presence.

The total lack of a change in the view paralyzes the sense of time as well. Kaim has no idea how many days have passed since he was thrown in here. Time flows on, that much is certain. But with nowhere to go, it simply stagnates inside him.

The true torture that prison inflicts on a man is neither to rob him of his freedom nor to force him to experience loneliness.

The real punishment is having to live where nothing ever moves in your field of view and time never flows.

The water in a river will never putrefy, but lock in a jar and that is exactly what it will eventually do.

The same is true here.

Maybe parts of him deep down in his body and mind are already beginning to give off a rotten stench.

Because he is aware of this, Kaim drags himself up from the floor again and slams himself into the bars over and over.

There is not the remotest chance that doing so will break a bar.

Nor does he think he can manage to escape this way.

Still, he does it repeatedly.

He can't help himself. He has to do it again and again.

In the instant before his body smashes into the bars--for that split second--a puff of wind strikes his cheek. The unmoving air moves, if only for that brief interval. The touch of the air is the one thing that gives Kaim a fragmentary hint of the flow of time.

The guards come running, faces grim with anger.

_Now I can see human shapes where before there was only a wall. That alone is enough to lift my spirits. Don't these guards realize that?_

"All right, Number 8, it's the punishment room for you! Let's see if three days in there will cool your head!"

Kaim's lips relax into a smile when he hears the order.

_Don't these guys get it? Now my scenery will change. Time will start flowing again. I'm thankful for that._

Kaim laughs aloud.

The guards tie his hands behind him, put chains on his ankles, and start for the punishment room.

"What the hell are you laughing at, Number 8?"

"Yeah, stop it! We'll punish you even more!"

But Kaim just keeps on laughing. Laughing at the top of his lungs.

_If I fill my lungs with all new air, will the stench disappear?_

_Or have my body and mind rotted so much already that I can't get rid of the stench so easily?_

_How long will they keep me locked up in here?_

_When can I get out of here?_

_Will it be too late by then?_

_When everything has rotted away, will I become less a "him" than an "it," the way our troops count enemy corpses?_

* * *

Kaim can hardly breathe.

It is as if the air is being squeezed out of his chest and the excruciating pain of it is drawing him back from the world of dream to reality.

_Was I once in a prison in the far, far distant past?_

He half wonders in the space between dream and reality.

He has had this dream any number of times--this nightmare, it might even be called. After waking, he tries to recall it, but nothing stays in his memory. One thing is certain, however: the appearance of the jail and of the guards in the dream is always the same.

_Could this be something I have actually experienced?_

_If so, when could it have been?_

There is no way for him to tell.

Once he is fully awake, those questions he asked between dream and reality are themselves erased from his memory.

He springs up with a scream, his breath labored, the back of his hand wiping the streams of sweat from his brow, and all that is left is the shuddering terror. It is always like this.

Now too--

He mutters to himself as he attempts to retrieve whatever memory is left in a remote corner of his brain, "What kind of past life could I have lived through?"

Now, too--

"What kind of past life could I have lived through?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: There are untold tales of prisoners being tortured in prisons. Although the modern times are trying to curb down the practice, few countries still continue to practice it, sometimes being done by their prison wardens or their fellow prisoners. It is even more common within the older times, where it is usually used as means to discourage the public from committing crimes, no matter how petty or severe it is. Such practice will have traumatic scars to the afflicted, either physically or mentally.


	5. A Mother Comes Home

He draws his cheeks back and lets his teeth show white against his brown skin.

"If this isn't a smile, what is?"

Kaim nods but says nothing. He pats the boy on the shoulder as if to say, "Sure, sure."

"Come on, really look at me. I'm smiling, right?"

"Right. You're smiling."

"Anyway, forget about me. Hurry, let's go."

The boy has a sweet, open nature.

He made instant friends with Kaim while the other townspeople kept their distance from the "strange traveler."

Not that the boy chose the much older Kaim as a playmate.

He leads Kaim to the tavern, which still hasn't opened its door for the day.

"I hate to ask you to do this, but... would you, please?" The boy's voice seems to have carried inside.

A man in the tavern peals off a drunken howl. He sounds especially bad today. Kaim fights back a sigh and enters the tavern.

The man on the barstool is the boy's father, drunk again at midday. The boy is here to take him home. He looks at his father with sad eyes.

Kaim puts his arm around the father's shoulder and discreetly moves the whiskey bottle away from him.

"Let's call it a day," he says. The man shoves Kaim's arm off and slumps down on the bar.

"I hate guys like you." he says.

"Yes, I know." says Kaim. " It's time to go home, though. You've had enough."

"You heard me, Kaim. Drifter! I hate you guys. I really really really hate you guys."

The father is always like this when he is drunk--hurling curses at all "drifters," picking fights with any man dressed for the road, and finally slumping to the ground to sleep it off. His son is too small to drag him home.

With a sigh, Kaim finds himself again today supporting the drunken father's weight to keep him from toppling off the bar stool.

The boy stares at his fahter, his eyes a jumble of sadness, anger, and pity.

When his eyes meet Kaim's he shrugs as if to say, _Sorry to keep putting you through this._

But Kaim is used to it. He has seen the father dead-drunk almost every day for the past year, ever since the boy and his father were left to live alone.

"Oh, well..." the boy says with a strained smile as if trying to resign himself to the situation.

"Poor Papa...

...poor me."

Supporting the father's weight on his shoulder, Kaim gives the boy a smile and says, "Yes, but you don't go out and get drunk the way he does."

"Ahem," the boy says, puffing his chest out.

"Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups."

Kaim broadens his smile to signal to him, _You're right._

Of course I'm right, the bay all but says with the smile he gives back.

It is the only kind of smile the ten-year-old has managed to produce in the past year: so bitter it would numb your tongue if you could taste it.

The boy's mother--the father's wife--left home a year ago.

She fell in love with a traveling salesman and abandoned the boy and his father.

"Mama was bore." the boy says matter-of-factly, looking back on his mother's infidelity "She got tired of doing the same thing every day. That's when she met him." 

At the tender age of ten, the boy has learned that there are certain stories that have to be told with that matter-of-fact tone.

The father was born and raised in this small town and worked in the town office. He was not especially talented, but it was not a job that called for talent or a quick wit. All he had to do was follow orders with diligence and submissiveness, and he had exactly that, year after year, without making waves.

"He called our life 'peaceful,' but Mama didn't think so. She said it was just 'ordinary' and no fun."

She was attracted to the life of the craft traveling salesman. It was risky and exciting, like walking on top of a prison wall: one misstep and you could end up inside.

"Papa told Mama that the man was deceiving her, that all he wanted was her money, but he couldn't get through to her. Mama couldn't even think about us back then."

With utter detachment, as though holding it at arm's length, the boy reflects on the tragedy that struck him family. "I've heard the saying 'Love is blind.' It really is!" he says with a shrug and a sardonic laugh like a full-fledged adult.

Kaim says nothing.

"Children should act their age" is another saying, but probably not one that could be spoken with a great deal of meaning to a boy who has lost his mother's love.

And even if Kaim presumed to admonish him, the boy would likely pass it off with a strained smile and say,

"Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups."

The boy's father, however, shows his displeasure when his son uses grownup expressions.

"The little twerp's lost all his boyishness. He despises me now. He thinks I'm pitiful. Deep down he's laughing at me for letting my wife be taken by another man, damn him."

It bothers him especially when he is drunk.

His annoyance far outweighs his fatherly love for his son. Sometimes, he even slaps the boy across the face, or tries to. When he is drunk, the boy can easily dodge his slaps, and he ends up sprawled on the floor.

Even as he is drowning in a sea of liquor, he can sometimes turn unexpectedly serious and start asking questions.

"Say, Kaim, you've been traveling for a long time, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Do you enjoy it all that much? Going to strange towns, meeting strangers can't be all that...is it so wonderful that you'd willing to abandon the life you're living now for it?"

He asks the same thing over and over. Kaim's answer is always the same. "Sometimes, it's enjoyably, and sometimes it's not."

He doesn't know what else to say.

"You know, Kaim. I've never set foot outside this town. Same with my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, and the one before him. We've always been born here and died here. My wife's family, too. They've had roots in this town for generations. So why did she do it? Why did she leave? What did she need so badly that she had to leave me and her own son?"

Kaim merely smiles without answering. The answer to such question cannot be conveyed in words. Try though he might to explain it, the reason certain people are drawn irresistibly to the road can never be understood by people who don't have that impulse. The father is simply one of those people who can never understand.

Failing to elicit a reply from Kaim, the father sinks again into the sea of drunkenness.

"I'm scared, Kaim." he says. "My son might do it, too. He might go away and leave me here someday. When I hear him talking like a grownup, I get so scared I can't stand it."

* * *

The boy's mother eventually comes back.

The traveling salesman cheated her out of every last bit of her savings, and the moment she was no longer of any use of him, he left her. Physically and mentally broken, she has only one place to return to--the home she abandoned.

First, she writes a letter from the neighboring town, and when her husband reads it again and again through drink-clouded eyes, he laughs derisively.

"Servers her right, the miserable witch."

He makes a show of tearing the letter to pieces in front of Kaim, without showing it to his son.

Kaim tells the boy everything and asks him. "What do you want to do? Whatever you decide, I'll help you make it happen."

"Whatever I decide?" the boy asks in return with his usual detached smile.

"If you want to leave this town, I'll let you have enough money to help you get by for a while." Kaim says, "I can do that much."

He is utterly serious.

The father has no intention of forgiving his wife. He will almost certainly turn her away if she shows up, and probably with a proud, vindictive smile on his face.

Kaim knows, however, that if the mother loses her home and leaves this town once and for all, the father will go back to drinking every day, cursing his wife's infidelity, bemoaning his own fate, taking out his anger on strangers, and constantly revealing the worst side of himself to his son.

Kaim's long life on the road has taught him this. Constant travel means meeting many different people, and the boy's father is undoubtedly one of the weakest men Kaim has ever met.

"You could join your mother and go to another town. Or if you wanted to go somewhere by yourself, I could find you work."

Either would be better, Kaim believes, than for the boy to continue living alone like this with his father.

The boy, however, seemingly intrigued, looks straight at Kaim, revealing his white teeth.

"You've been traveling a long time, haven't you, Kaim?"

"Uh-huh..."

"Always alone?"

"Sometimes alone, sometimes not..."

"Hmmm..."

The boy gives a little nod and, with the sad smile of a grownup, says, "You really don't get it, do you?"

"What's that?"

"All this traveling, and you still don't understand the most important thing."

His sad smile takes on its usual bitter edge.

* * *

Kaim finally learns what the boy is talking about three days later.

A tired-looking woman in tattered clothes drags herself from the highway into the market place.

The townsfolk back away from her, staring, leaving her in the center of a broad empty circle.

The boy's mother has come back.

The boy breaks his way through the crowd and enters the circle. The mother sees her son, and her travel-withered cheeks break into a smile.

The boy takes one step, and another step toward his emaciated, smiling mother. He is hesitant at first, but from the third step, he is running, and he throws his arms around her.

He is crying. He is smiling. For the first time Kaim has seen, he wears the unclouded smile of a child.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me..." his mother begs, in tears.

She clasps his head to her bosom and says, smiling through her tears, "You've gotten so big!"

Then she adds: "I won't leave you again. I'll stay here forever..."

A stir goes through the crowd.

It comes from the direction of the tavern.

Now the father breaks through the wall of people and enters the circle.

He is drunk.

Stumbling, he edges toward his wife and son. He glares at his wife.

The boy stands between them, guarding his mother.

"Papa, stop it!" he yells. "Mama is back. That's enough, isn't it? Forgive her, Papa, please!" His voice is choked with tears.

The father says nothing in reply.

Glaring at the two of them, he collapses to his knees, his arms open wide.

He enfolds both his wife and son. The shattered family is one again.

"Papa, please, don't hold us so tight! It hurts!"

The boy is crying and smiling.

The mother can only sob.

The father weeps in his rage.

Witnessing the scene from the back of the crowd, Kaim turns on his heels.

* * *

"Are you really leaving?" the boy asks again and again as he accompanies Kaim to the edge of town.

"Uh-huh. I want to get across the ocean before winter sets in."

"Papa is already missing you. He says he thought you two could finally become drinking buddies from now on."

"You can drink with him when you grow up."

"When I grow up, huh?" the boy cocks his head, a little embarrassed, then he mutters, "I wonder if I'll still be living in this town then."

No one knows that, of course. Maybe some years from now, the father will spend his days drunk again because his son has left his home town and family. And yet--Kaim recalls something he forgot to say to the boy's weak father.

"We call it a 'journey' because we have a place to come home to. No matter how many detours or mistakes a person might make, as long as he has a place to come home to, a person can always start again."

"I don't get it," says the boy. Kaim remembers something else.

"Smile for me." he says one last time, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Like this?"

He reveals his white teeth, and his cheeks wrinkle up.

It's a good smile.

He has finally managed to retrieve the smile of a young boy.

"Now your turn, Kaim."

"Uh... sure."

The boy studies Kaim's smile as if assigning it a grade.

"Maybe a little sad." he says. That he is joking makes his words hit home all the more. The boy smiles again, as if providing a model for Kaim.

"Okay, then." he says with a wave of the hand. "I'm going shopping with Papa and Mama today."

Kaim smiles back and walks away.

Then he hears the boy calling his name one last time. "Even if we're saying goodbye, I'm not going to cry, Kaim! Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups."

Kaim does not look back, his only reply a wave of the hand. The boy's expression would probably change if their eyes met.

He decides to play it strong to the end.

Kaim walks on.

After a brief respite, his journey with no place to go home to starts again.

A journey with no place to go home to; the poets call that "wandering."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Couples moving away from each other during an intense, emotional moment is a very personal matter, and it can be hard for both parties to find a common ground and understanding with each other.


	6. Little Liar

Everyone in the marketplace hates the little girl.

Not yet ten years old, and far from having outgrown the sweet innocence of childhood, she ears only open contempt from the grownups who have shops in the market.

The reason is simple.

She lies about everything.

"Hey, mister, I just saw a burglar go into your house!"

"Look, lady, everything just fell off your shelves!"

"Hey, everybody, did you hear what the traveler said? Bandits are planning to attack this market!"

Even the most harmless white lies can be annoying if repeated often enough, and the shopkeepers have found themselves growing angry.

"You better watch out for her, too." the lady greengrocer warns Kaim. "Nobody here falls for her lies anymore, so she's always on the lookout for newcomers or strangers. Somebody like you would be a perfect target for her."

She could be right.

Kaim is new to the town. He arrived a few days ago and has just started working in the marketplace today.

"What did her parents do?" Kaim asks while unloading a cart full of vegetables.

The woman frowns and shakes her head with a sigh.

"She doesn't have any."

"They died?"

"The mother did, at least. Maybe four or five years ago. She was a healthy young woman who never so much as caught a cold in her lief, then one day she collapsed, and that was it for her."

"How about the father?"

She sighs more deeply than before and says, "He left to find a job in the city."

The parents used to operate a variety store in the market, though the mother almost single-handedly took care of the actual buying and selling of the many goods they carried.

As soon as she died, the shop's fortunes took a plunge, until it was eventually taken over by someone else. The father went off to the distant capital city in search of a good-paying job that would enable him to cover their debts.

He promised to come back in six months, but he has been gone a whole year now. Letters used to arrive from him on occasion care of his friend the tailor, but those, too, gave out about six months ago.

"I guess you could sau it's sad for such a little girl t be waiting around for her father to come home, but still..."

The girl now sleeps in a corner of the communal storehouse run by the people of the marketplace.

"We all used to talk about taking care of her-- to be stand-in parents for her until her father comes back."

This is no surprise to Kaim. He knows from his own experience that all the people who work in the marketplace--and not just this plump, kindly woman--are good-hearted and generous despite their limited means. Otherwise, they never would have hired a stranger like himself.

"But long before that first six months went by, we were all heartily sick of her. She was a sweet, simple girl while her mother was alive, but this experience has left her kind of twisted.

All her sweetness is gone.

Of course we all feel sorry for her, and we take our turns feeding her and dressing her in hand-me-downs, but the way she keeps telling lies to all the grownups, nobody really cares about her anymore.

Why can't she see that...?"

"She must be lonely, don't you think?"

With a pained smile, the woman shrugs and says, "That's enough gabbing for one day. Work, work!" and she goes back inside the shop.

* * *

Kaim is sorting the vegetables he has unloaded in front of the shop when he hears a little voice behind him.

"Hi, mister, you new here?"

It's the girl.

"Uh-huh..."

"You're not from the town, are you?"

"No, I'm not..."

"Are you living upstairs while you work here?"

"For a while, at least. That's what I'm hoping to do."

"I'll tell you a secret, okay?'

It's starting already.

"Okay." Kaim says without pausing in his work.

"There'a a ghost in this marketplace. The people here don't tell anybody about it because it's bad for business, but it's really here. I see it all the time."

" _Really?!_ " Kaim responds with feigned surprise.

He decides to play along with her rather than scold her for lying.

In this endlessly long life of his, he has encountered any number of children who have lost their parents or been abandoned by them.

The sadness and loneliness of children who have been cast into the wide world alone are exactly what Kaim feels himself as he continues to wander through the infinite flow of time.

"What kind of ghost?"

"A woman. And I know who she is."

"It's a ghost of a mother who lost her child," she says.

Her little girl--her only child--died in an epidemic.

Overcome with grief, the mother chose to die, and now her ghost appears in the market every night, searching for her daughter.

"The poor mother! She killed herself so she could be with her daughter, but she can't find her in the other world, either. So she keeps looking for her here and calling out, 'Where are you? Hurry and come with Mommy to the other world.'"

The girl tells her story with deadly seriousness.

"Don't you think it's sad?" she asked Kaim. She actually has tears in her eyes--which is precisely why Kaim knows she is lying.

Even if he had not been warned by the woman, he would know this was a lie based on what she told him about the girl's background.

Kaim carefully arranges bunches of well-ripened grapes in a display crate and asks the girl, "Why do you think the mother can't find her daughter?"

"What?" The girl asks him with a dazed stare.

"Well." he explains, "The girl is not in the other world, and she's not wandering around in this world, so where is she?"

Kaim does not mean this to be a cross-examination.

He simply feels that someone who lies out of sorrow can have a far easier time of it by recognizing the lie for what it is. The loneliness of a girl who has lost her mother and been abandoned by her father consists not in telling one little lie but in having to keep on lying.

"Hmm, now that you mention it, that's a good point." the girl says, smiling calmly. "Really-- _where_ did the girl go?"

Kaim momentarily considers pointing at the girl as if to say "Right here." but before he can do so, she continues:

"This is the first time anybody ever asked me that. You're kind of... _different_."

"I wonder..."

"No, you are. You're different." the girl insists.

"I think we can be friends." Her smile deepends.

Kaim smiles her back at her, saying nothing.

Just then, they hear the lady greengrocer coming from the back of the shop, and the girl dashes away.

Just before she disappears around a corner into the alleyway, the girl gives Kaim a little wave as if to say "See you soon!" For the first time, the face of the little girl with the all-too-grownup speaking style shows a hint of childishness befitting her years.

* * *

The girl begins coming to see Kaim at the shop several times a day when the lady grocer is not around.

She tells him one like after another.

"I baked cookies with my mother last night. I wanted to give you some, but they were so good I ate them all."s

"Bandits kidnapped me when I was a little baby, but my father came to save me and beat up all the bandits, so I didn't get killed."

"My house? It's a big, white one at the foot of the mountain. You're new here so you probably don't know it. It's the biggest house in town."

"You don't have a family? You're all alone? Poor Kaim! I wish I could share some of my happiness with you!"

All her lies are borne of sorrow: sad, lonely lies she could never tell to marketplace people who know her background.

At the end of every chat with Kaim, as she is leaving, the girl holds her finger to her lips and says,

"This is just our little secret. Don't tell the lady grocer."

Of course, Kaim says nothing to anyone.

If he happens to find himself in a situation where the market people are speaking ill of the girl, he quietly slips away.

Lies and disparagements are funny things. They don't take shape because someone tells them but rather because someone listens to and voices agreement with them.

A truly isolated individual can never speak ill of anyone.

The same can be said regarding lies.

Because she has someone to tell her lies to, the girl need not fall into the abyss of true isolation.

To protect her small, sad share of happiness, Kaim plays the role of her listener, raising no objections.

* * *

One day when the girl comes to see Kaim, she takes special care not to be noticed by the lady grocer or by the owners of the neighboring shops.

"Tell me, Mister, are you planning to stay here a long, long time?"

"No, I'm not," Kaim says, continuing to unload vegetables and fruit.

"You'll be leaving when you save up enough money?"

"Probably."

"But you don't have enough yet?"

"I'm getting there," he says, turning a strained smile on the girl.

This is a white lie of his own. He already has enough money to support himself on the road. Nor has he taken his current live-in job because he needs money so badly.

He is here because he has not found a destination he wants to travel to. A journey without a destination is an endless journey.

Wise men say that you need dreams and goals in life. But dreams to accomplish and goals to realize shine as guideposts in life precisely because life is finite.

So, then, what should be the dreams and goals of one who has been burdened with a life that has no end?

Kaim's is not a journey to be hurried.

Nor is it one that _can_ be hurried. Perhaps drifting day after day with no destination can not even be called a journey.

"If I were you," says the girl, "I would get out of this marketplace as soon as I had saved up enough for two or three days of traveling."

Kaim responds to her with a silent, pained smile.

What would be the look on the girl's face if Kaim were to tell her, "I'm staying here for you"?

I am finding the meaning of my life for now in providing you with a listener for your lies.

The moment these words come to mind--words he can never actually speak to her--the girl looks around furtively and says in a near-whisper, "If you want to get out of here soon, I know a good way you can do it."

"A good way...?"

"Sneak into the tailor's and steal his money. There's a little pot in the cabinet at the back of the shop. It's full of money."

"Are you telling me to steal it?"

"Yes."

She looks straight at Kaim without the slightest show of doubt in her eyes.

In all seriousness, she goes on to explain, "That tailor _deserves_ to have his place robbed."

The money in the pot, she says, is tainted.

"I know this girl, a good friend of mine," she says, "and it's so sad about her.

Her mother died, and her father went off to work in the capital, and she's all alone.

Her father was supposed to come and get her after six months, but she hasn't heard a thing from him."

Yet another lie borne of sorrow.

Kaim calmly asks, "Is there some connection between your friend and the tailor?"

"Of course," she says. "A close connection. What's really happening is the father was sending her money every month the way he was supposed to, to help make her life in the town a little easier. And he kept writing to her. He wanted to tell her he found a good job in the city and she should come to live with him right away. He's too busy to come for her, so she should come to him. And he sent her money for the trip. But none of the letters or the money ever reached the girl.

And why do you think that is?"

Before Kaim can answer, the girl says, "The mistake he made was to send the letters and money care of the tailor. He's been keeping all the money for himself."

Kaim looks away from the girl.

In order to prop op one sad lie, the girl has piled on a still sadder one--a lie that can hurt another person.

This is the saddest thing of all.

"The lock on the tailor's back door would be really easy to break," the girl adds, and she gallops away without waiting for Kaim's reply.

* * *

The girl comes runniing into the grocery store the next morning, shouting for the owner.

She says directly to the woman, not to Kaim.

"Burglars broke into the tailor's shop last night!"

She says she saw a number of burglars sneaking in late at night after the marketplace emptied out.

"My oh my," says the woman with a forced smile, "that must have been just terrible."

She is obviously not taking the girl seriously.

"But it's true, though! I really saw them!"

"Look, little girl, I've had just about all I can take from you. You're such a little liar, it scares me to death to think about you growing up to be a burglar or a con artist or something. I'm busy trying to open my shop now, do you mind? Try it on somebody else."

She is hardly through speaking when someone outside shouts,

"Help! Somebody come!" The tailor is standing in the street, looking horrified and screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Bur--burglars! They took all my mo-mo-money!"

The little girl slips away as the tailor comes in.

* * *

The marketplace is in an uproar.

The girl was not lying: that much is certain.

But, all too accustomed to her lies, people now suggest the possibility of another kind of lie.

"Maybe she did it. What do you think?"

And so it begins...

"I think you may be right."

"Talk about play-acting!"

"I wouldn't put it past her."

"Let's go find her. We'll make her tell--even if we have to get a little rough with her."

No one objects to this suggestion.

Some run off to the storehouse, and others start searching the marketplace.

"Can't find her anywhere!"

"The storehouse is empty."

"She ran away with the money!"

As the searchers return with their reports and speculation, Kaim finally understands everything.

After all her sad lies, the girl has left behind one final truth.

"She couldn't have gotten very far!"

"Yeah, we can still catch her!"

"The little thief! Wait till I get my hands on her!"

The men rage, and the women fan the flames:

"Good! Give her what she deserves!"

"We were so nice to her, and now look how she treats us! We can't let her get away with it!"

A dozen men start to run after her, but Kaim stands tall in the road, blocking their way.

"Hey, move it!"

The men are out for blood, but Kaim knows if he felt like it, he could knock them all down and they wouldn't be able to lay a finger on him.

Instead, he relaxes his powerful stance and throws a leather coin pouch on the ground in front of the men.

"The stolen money is in there," he says.

"What?"

"Sorry, I stole it."

A confused stir quickly turns into angry shouts.

Kaim raises his hands to show he will not resist.

"Do what you like with me. I'm ready."

The lady grocer breaks through the wall of men, shouting at him. "How could you do this, Kaim?"

"I wanted the money, that's all."

"And you're not just saying this to protect the girl?"

The woman's intuition is too sharp.

Forcing a smile, Kaim turns to the tailor and says, "It was in the pot in the cabinet, right?"

The man nods energetically.

"It's true! He must have done it! I had the money in a pot! He's the thief!"

"The money wasn't the only thing in the pot, though, was it?"

"What are you saying?"

"You had some letters in there, too. Letters from the girl's father."

"That's a lie! Don't be crazy!"

"It's true, though."

"No, there couldn't have been any letters! I threw them all--"

The tailor claps his hand over his mouth.

But it is too late.

The lady grocer glares at him.

"What's this all about?" she demands.

"Uh... no... I mean..."

"You'd better tell us everything."

The people's angry glances turn from Kaim to the tailor.

* * *

Some days later, two letters arrive from the girl addressed to "The lady at the grocery store and the nice man upstairs."

Kaim's letter says the girl managed to find her father in the capital.

He has no way of knowing if this is true or not.

It is hard to imagine a little girl finding her father in the big city so easily without knowing his address or workplace.

Still, he decides to believe it when the girl's letter says, "I am happy now."

Human beings are the only animals that lie.

Lies to deceive people, lies to benefit oneself, and lies to protect one's own heart from the threat of crushing loneliness and sorrow.

If there were no lies in this world, much strife and misunderstanding would surely disappear.

On the other hand, perhaps it is because this world is a mixture of truth and lies that people have learned how to "believe".

When he is through reading his letter, Kaim turns to the woman.

Concentrating on her own letter, she shyly raises her head when she senses Kaim looking at her.

"I give up!" she declares "Listen to this:

'I am so grateful to you and the others in the marketplace for all you have done for me. I will never forget you as long as I live.'

A liar to the bitter end, that girl," she says, smiling through her tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yes, children lying exist, even perpetual liars. I believe that we all lie to people around when we are children, don't we?


	7. The Upstreamers

Strong winds have always blown across this vast grassy plain.

Perhaps the area's topography has something to do with it, but the direction of the wind remains constant, irrespective of the time or season:

From east to west, from the horizon where the sun rises to the horizon where the sun sets.

Swept by the unceasing winds, the misshapen trunks and branches of shrubs all incline to the west. Tall grasses do not grow here, and the grasses that do grow all lie flat on the ground, bending westward.

Caravans and herding folk traverse the single road that crosses the plain. They do not "come and go," they only go, moving from east to west, using the wind at their backs to gain distance. Travelers heading west to east always use the circuitous route that snakes around the southern mountains. It is much farther that way, but much faster than crossing the plain head-on into the wind.

The road across the plain is called the Wind Stream. Just as the flow of a great river never changes direction, the footsteps of those who use the road have not changed direction since the distant past, nor are they likely to change far into the distant future: from east to west.

Human shapes that appear from the horizon where the sun rises disappear over the horizon where the sun sets.

They never pass oncoming travelers--with only the rarest exceptions.

* * *

The first time she passed Kain on the Wind Stream, the girl was just an infant.

"So, was my grandmother alive then?"

In response to the girl's untroubled question, Kaim smiles and answers, "She was. And I remember what a nice old lady she was, too."

Looking back down the road, the girl points toward the line of hills fading off into the distance.

"My grandmother crossed seven hills on her journey."

"Is seven a lot?"

"Uh-huh. Grandma lived a long time. Most people end their journeys after five hills. The people they leave behind built a little grave where they ended their journey, and then they keep traveling..."

The girl points down at the ground where she is standing.

"This is as far as I've come," she says with a proud, happy smile.

The religion of the girl and her family professes a pious belief that if they devote their lives to walking eastward, against the flow of the Wind Stream, they will arrive at the easternmost source of the Stream itself.

People call believers in that religion "The Upstreamers."

The word carries a hint of fear and sadness, but also a trace of contempt and scorn.

The Upstreamers are devoid of worldly desires. They live their lives for no greater purpose than traveling eastward on foot. They are free of doubt. They give birth to children en route, and they continue their journey while raising their children. When they age and their strength gives out, their journey ends. But their family's journey continues.

From child to grandchild to great-grandchild, their belief is carried on.

The journey of this girl's family was begun by her late grandmother, who began walking from the Wind Stream's western verge with her son, who was then the age the girl is now.

The Upstreamers do not walk for the entire year, of course. During the season when the winds are especially strong--from late autumn to early spring--they take up residence in various post towns scattered along the road and earn day wages by performing tasks that the townsfolk themselves refuse to do. Some Upstreamers choose to stay in the towns, while others, conversely, take townspeople with them when they return to the road in the spring.

These are people with whom they have fallen in love during the long winter, or boys who dream of travel, or grown-ups who have tired of town life.

Such are the reasons the townsfolk look upon the Upstreamers with complicated gazes.

The little girl's mother was one of those who joined the journey mid-way, and the girl herself, some years from now, might fall in love with someone in a post town somewhere. She might choose to live in the town, or she could just as well invite her lover to join her on the road.

She has no idea at this point what lies in store for her.

The girl's father calls out to her: "Time to go!"

Their brief rest is over.

She seems sorry to leave and stands up reluctantly. "Too bad," she says. "I wish I could have talked with you more. But we have to get to the next town by the time the snow starts."

Constantly exposed to headwinds, her cheeks are red and cracked, her lips chapped, but her smile is wonderful as she wishes Kaim a safe journey.

It is the serene smile of one who believes completely in the purpose of her life, without the slightest doubt.

"Will I see you again somewhere?" she asks.

"Probably."

Kaim answers, smiling back at her, but he can never match that smile of hers. He is now in the midst of a journey that will take him beyond the western end of the Wind Stream. He heads to the battlefield as a mercenary, and by the time the western battle is over, a new battle will have begun in the east.

It will be a long, cruel journey, with nothing to believe in. When he meets the girl again along the way, Kaim's smile will have taken on even more shadows that it has now.

Perhaps as a parting gift of sorts, the girl sings a few short lines for him:

_This wind, where does it blow from?_

_Where does it start its journey here?_

_Does it come from where life begins?_

_Or does it begin where life ends?_

"Goodbye, then," the girl says, trudging on, one labored step at a time, hair streaming in the headwind.

* * *

Ten long years have flowed by when Kaim next meets the girl.

It is spring, when the grassland is dotted with lovely white flowers.

She has become the wife of a young man who does tailoring and shoe repair in one of the post towns.

"This is my third spring here," she says, patting her swollen belly fondly.

In a few days, she will give birth to a child. She will become a mother.

"And your parents...?" Kaim asks.

She shrugs and glances eastward.

"They are continuing their journey. I'm the only one who stayed on here."

Kaim does not ask why she has done this.

Continuing the journey is one way to live, and staying in a town is another.

Neither can be judged to be more correct than the other. The only answer for the girl can be seen in her smiling face.

"But never mind about me," she says, looking at him suspiciously.

"You haven't changed one little bit from the time we met so long ago."

For the thousand-year-old, ten years is nothing but a change in season.

"Some lives are like that," he says, straining to smile. "Some people in this world can never grow old, no matter how long they live."

He looks at the girl, now grown into a woman, and wonders again, _Living through endless ages of time: is it a blessing or a curse?_

Kaim's remark hardly counts as an explanation, but the girl nods with a look of apparent understanding.

"If that's the case," she says, "You should be the one who goes to the place where the wind begins, You'd be the perfect Upstreamer."

She could be right: after all, the lifespan given to humans is far too short for anyone to travel against the flow of the Wind Stream as far as the starting point of the wind.

Still, Kaim responds with a few slow shakes of his head.

"I'm not qualified to make the journey."

"No? Anybody can be an Upstreamer. Anybody, that is, who wants to see where the wind starts with his or her own eyes."

Having said this, however, the girl adds with a touch of sadness, "No one has actually seen it, though, I guess."

The place where the wind begins: that place is nowhere at all. Even if, after a long journey, one were to arrive at the eastern end of the Wind Stream, the wind would be blowing there, too. And not just an east wind. West wind, north wind, south wind: winds without limit, without end.

Human beings, who cannot live forever, daring to take a journey without end. This might be the ultimate tragedy, but it could just be the ultimate comedy. Kaim knows one thing, however: one cannot simply dismiss it as an exercise in futility.

"How about you?" he asks the girl. "Aren't you going to continue your journey soon?"

She thinks about this for the space of a breath and, caressing her swollen belly, she cocks her head and says, "I wonder... I might want to go on living the way I am now forever. Or then again, I might feel that desire to reach the starting point of the wind."

All the Upstreamers without exception say that you can never know what might trigger a return to the journey. One day, without warning, you slough off the entire town life and start walking.

It is not always a matter of running into an Upstreamer and being lured back to the road: plenty of people set out on their own all of a sudden.

The teachings of the Upstreamers say that all human beings harbor a desire for endless travel. They probably are not aware of the desire because it is stashed away so far down in the breast that it is deeper than memory.

The instant something brings it to the surface, a person becomes an Upstreamer.

"Even you have the desire," the girl says to Kaim.

"I wonder..."

"It's true," she says. "No question."

The look in her eyes is as straight-on and free of doubt as it was the last time he met her.

Fixing him with that look, she points to her own chest.

"I haven't completely lost it myself."

"But I'm sure you're happy with your present life?"

"Of course I am."

"Do you really think the day will come when you will want to set out on the journey even if it means giving up that happiness?"

Instead of answering, she gives him a gentle smile.

* * *

Many years flow by, but every now and then, something reminds Kaim of the girl's words--that everyone harbors a desire for endless travel.

For Kaim, living itself is a journey without end.

In the course of his journey, he has witnessed countless deaths, and he has also witnessed countless births. Human life is all too short, too weak and fleeting.

Yet the more he dwells upon its evanescence, the more he feels, inexplicably, that words such as "eternal" and "perpetual" apply more properly to life, finite as it is, than to anything else.

Traveling down the Wind Stream for the first time in many years, Kaim spies the funeral of an Upstreamer.

A young boy in mourning dress stands by the road, holding out wildflowers to passing travelers and urging them to "offer up a flower to a noble soul who has made the long journey this far."

Kaim takes a flower and asks the boy, "Is it a member of your family?"

"Uh-huh. My grandma." The boy nods, his face the image of one Kaim knew so long ago.

The old woman lying in her coffin must be the girl. Kaim is sure of it.

"Grandma traveled a long, long time. She brought my daddy with her when he was just a little boy. See that hill over there? She started walking from way, way beyond it and she got all the way here."

So, the girl must have set out on her journey after all.

Turning her back on the town life, leading her child by the hand, she trod her way along the endless journey.

Her wish to aim for the place where the wind begins would be passed on to her child, her grandchild, and on through succeeding generations.

To head for a land one could never hope to reach, and to do so generation after generation: this is another endless journey.

Is it a tragedy?

A comedy?

Perhaps the serene smile on the face of the old woman in the coffin is the answer.

Kaim lays the flower at her feet as an offering.

The family members who have traveled with her join together in a song for the departed:

_This wind, where does it blow from?_

_Where does it start its journey here?_

_Does it come from where life begins?_

_Or does it begin where life ends?_

The wind blow.

It sweeps across the vast grassland.

Kaim takes one long, slow step toward his destination.

"Have a good trip!" calls the boy.

Red and cracked as the girl's were so long ago, his cheeks soften in a smile as he waves to the departing traveler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Upstreamer's culture appears to be a mix of different nomadic tribes, though their religion is hard to pinpoint of which it references.


	8. They Live in Shells

He is in darkness.

Unlike the darkness of night, it is enclosed, devoid of depth or expanse.

He hears a heavy door slowly rumbling open

A shaft of light shoots in, butt it is not so well defined as that. To eyes accustomed to nothing but darkness, however, the faint gleam feels like a shower of sparks.

"Stop this! Please, I beg you! Let me go!"

A young man's screams echo through the emptiness.

No voice answers him.

Crouching in the darkness, Kaim counts the footsteps. Three men have come in. The disorderly footsteps probably belong to the young man. The other two are perfectly regular.

"Please, I'm begging you. If it's money you want, I'll get you all you could ask for on the outside. I promise. I won't forget to show my thanks to you. Please!"

The only reply of the two men who have brought the young one here is a clunk of an iron lock opening.

"No! No! Please, I'm begging you. I'll do anything you want. Anything!"

A dull thud is the sound of flesh tearing, bone wrenching. Someone collapses on the floor. A strangled scream. The clunk of an iron lock closing.

Kaim knows the young man has been thrown into the shell diagonally opposite of his own. When you are locked into one of these windowless shells, you hearing becomes acutely sensitive.

"Don't do this! Let me out of here! Please! Let me out of here!"

From the sound of the voice, Kaim can imagine a young man's face with boyish traces: a small-time hoodlum hardly a step above a teenage gang member. When he was still on the streets, no doubt, he used to swagger down the sidewalk, his cunning but cowardly eyes darting every which way.

The two men who brought him here maintain their silence to the end, their footsteps moving off together. The heavy door opens and closes again.

Left alone in the darkness, the young man howls his entreaties for a time, but when he realizes they will do no good, he shouts himself hoards, spitting out one curse after another until he begins to sob.

"Quiet down there," an old man calls out from one of the inner shells. "It won't do you any good to make a fuss. Time to give up, sonny."

This is the voice of the oldest man living in the dozen or so shells lined up in the darkness.

He was already here when Kaim was sent to this place. It is always his role to quiet and comfort the obstreperous newcomers.

"If you've got time to bawl like that, keep your eyes closed!"

"Huh...?"

"Just make sure you keep sucking on your memories of the outside--like a piece of candy!"

Sounds of suppressed laughter come from the surrounding shells.

Kaim joins in with a smile and a sigh.

All the shells in the dark are supposedly full, but few of their inhabitants are laughing.

Most of them have lost the strength to laugh.

"Hey, sonny." the old man continues in his role as advisor to the newcomer. "No point making a fuss. Just calm down and accept your fate. Otherwise..." and here a note of intensity enters the old man's voice. "They'll just drag you out of here feet first."

This is exactly what happened yesterday to the former inhabitant of the young man's shell.

He had been screaming on and off for a day. Then came a day of banging his head against the shell wall. Then nothing...until he was dragged out in silence.

"So get a hold of yourself, sonny. Don't let the darkness swallow you up. Close your eyes and imagine nice scenery from the outside, the bigger the better: the ocean, or the sky, or some huge field of grass. Remember! Imagine! That's the only way to survive this place."

This was the advice he always gave to newcomers.

But the young man screamed tearfully.

"Who the hell do you think you're kidding? Survive this place?

And then what? I know what this place is. 'No Exit' Prison! They throw the lifers in here, give them just enough food to keep them alive, and in the end they kick the bucket anyway. Am I right? There's nothing left to hope for."

His shouts turn to sobs again.

This is the reaction of most of the newcomers.

Nor are they mistaken. This is a prison. Each of the "shells" is a solitary cell with bars, and the sun shines on a prisoner only on the day of his funeral.

"Everybody dies, sonny, that's for sure. You just can't let your mind go before your body does. Hope doesn't have to fade unless you throw it out yourself," the old man goes on softly.

Then he adds with feeling. "This system we live under can't last much longer, either."

The old man is a political prisoner. As leader of the anti-government faction, he long resisted the dictatorship until he finally lost the struggle and was imprisoned.

The young man has no ears for the old man's words, however. He continues thrashing on the floor and crying.

This fellow won't be in his shell much longer than his predecessor. In a few days, or in less than a month at best, he will go to pieces.

The darkness is that powerful. Depriving a prisoner of light is far crueler than taking his life in an instant.

"My my," the old man reflects, "this fellow's not going to do us much good in a prison break."

The old revolutionary laughs. It might be a genuine laugh or a bold front, but in any case almost no one laughs in response.

Tomorrow morning--or rather, since there is no clear-cut "morning" in the darkness--after they go to sleep, wake up, and have their next meal, another cold corpse will be dragged out wordlessly from another shell.

* * *

"Hey, listen. How many of us are here now?" the old revolutionary asks. "Answer if you can hear me!"

"I can hear you," Kaim says.

His is the only voice.

"Man, this is bad. We were full-up a little while ago."

The old man gives a dry chuckle.

Kaim asks, "I wonder if something's happened out there."

"Maybe so," answers the old revolutionary.

"If you ask me, this would be about the right time for a coup d'etat or a revolution.

"My 'boys' aren't going to keep quiet much longer..."

"Uh, what as your name again? Kaim? Have you noticed what's happening? How there used to be a lot more guys getting thrown in here until a little while ago, and most of them real nobodies, not worth sentencing to life?"

"Uh-huh, sure..."

The young man was one of them--nothing but a small-time crook. It just so happened that the storehouse he broke into belonged to a rich man with ties to a powerful politician. This was the only reason they put him in a shell.

"The shells always used to be full. They would throw a bunch of men in here and they would die, then the new men would come, and _they_ would die..."

The young man was one of those. The terror of being enveloped in darkness was too much for him, and he went to pieces. He was apparently having hallucinations at the end, "I'm coming. Mama, I'm coming. Wait for me, please, Mama..." he repeated over and over like a child. "Where are you, Mama? Here? Are you here?" and he gouged his own eyes out with his bare hands.

"I figured things were getting scary out there, the cops losing control, so the government was really starting to crack down--which is why these shells were always full."

This is what brought the young man here. Blood streaming from his eye sockets, he died muttering in snatches. "What did _I_ do? Everybody knows damn well...there are plenty of men way worse than me..."

"But now the place is empty. Do you know what that means, Kaim?"

"Sure. There's so much crime out there now that the government can't suppress it."

"You got it. The whole royal family might be strung up by now for all we know. It's a revolution. It will happen any day now! That means you and I will get out of here. My boys will come and get us. Just hang in there a little while longer."

Kaim nods in silence. The old revolutionary goes on, "You're strong, Kaim. Not many guys could stay as calm as you, thrown into a shell and enveloped in darkness like this."

Not even Kaim can explain it. It is true that he was strangely calm when they put him in the shell. The darkness was something he seemed to recognize as a distant memory. In the distant past, he, too, may have tasted the anguish of the other shell inhabitants so tortured by the fear of being sealed in darkness.

"How are you so tough mentally, Kaim? Does it mean you, too, are a revolutionary?"

"No, not me..."

His crime is hardly worth talking about. He resisted somewhat under questioning when they brought him in as a suspect, and for that he was branded a rebel and thrown into a shell. The old man is probably right, though. The country's dictatorships is almost certainly in its last days.

"It won't be long now. We'll be back in the real world before we know it. I have hope right in here, and it will stay here until I abandon it myself." the old revolutionary mutters as if trying ton convince himself.

* * *

The prison falls soon afterward. Armed young men come charging into the darkness and open the shell's barred doors.

Embraced by his "boys," the old revolutionary goes out.

"Wait," Kaim cries, trying to hold him back.

But he is too late. Anxious to see the new world following the destruction of the old system, the old revolutionary steps outside and opens his eyes.

It is evening.

Though the sun is nearly down, its light is still strong enough to burn eyes accustomed to total darkness.

The old revolutionary presses his hands to his eyes and, with a groan, crumples to his knees.

Kaim has saved himself by shielding his eyes with his arm.

Not even he knows what caused him to do this. Could distant memories have taught him that the truly frightening thing about punishment by darkness is what happens after the release from prison?

_When could I have been imprisoned, and where?_   
_More important, how long have I been on this endless journey?_

With bleeding eyes, surrounded on the ground by his boys, the old revolutionary searches for Kaim.

"I came all this way, Kami, only to make one terrible mistake at the bitter end. My eyes are probably useless now."

This is precisely why he asks Kaim for one last favor.

"Tell me, Kaim, what is the outside world like? Has the revolution succeeded? Are the people happy? Are they smiling joyfully?"

Kaim opens his eyes slowly, and just barely, beneath the shade of his hand.

As far as he can see, the ground is covered in bodies. The corpses of royal troops and revolutionary troops are heaped on one another, and countless civilians are dead. A mother lies dead with her small child in her arms, the bloody corpse of the child's father next to them, arms outstretched in a vain attempt to shield them.

"Tell me what you see, Kaim."

Kaim fights back a sigh and says, "You must work from now on to build a happy society."

The old revolutionary senses the truth.

"I won't abandon hope, Kaim, no matter what."

As if to say, "I know that," Kaim nods and begins to walk away.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know... someplace."

"Why don't you stay here and build a new world with us? You of all people can do that, I know."

"Thank you, Sir, but, I'll be moving on just the same."

The old revolutionary does not try anymore to hold Kaim back. Instead, as a parting gift, he repeats for Kaim the words he spoke so often in his shell.

"There will always be hope, wherever you are, until you yourself abandon it. Never forget that!"

Kaim walks on.

His eyes chance to light on the body of a young boy lying at his feet. The boy breathed his last with eyes wide open in fear.

Kaim kneels and gently closes the boy's eyelids.

He knows deep down, in a memory too far away for even him to reach, that while darkness can be a great source of terror, it can also bring deep and lasting peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sadly speaking, getting blinded after being in darkness for too long and your eyes being greeted by bright light is a myth, with the addition of eyes suddenly bleeding. However, if there truly is such condition, please send me a note as well as the name so that I can read more of it.
> 
> On the other side, having your vision adapted to darkness is real. It is called "dark adaption." Adults being depraved of light and living in darkness for extended periods of time cannot be blinded, but light deprivation can cause severe vision loss to young children and even newborn babies.


	9. The Talkative Mercenary

The ramparts will fall to the enemy.

It is just a matter of time.

They will mount their attack at dawn.

The main body of the allied force has already drawn far back from the front.

Only the mercenaries are left behind the barricade.

Their orders: defend it to the death.

These men, who have gone from battlefield to battlefield, know exactly what that means.

"They've just left us here to die," chuckles the one called Toma in darkness too thick for a person to make out his own hand. "They want us to buy time so the main force can pull farther back. We're supposed to be their shields, performing our final service for our employers."

His dry, papery laugh shakes the darkness.

Kaim says nothing in reply. Other mercenaries must be gathered there around them in the blackness, but all keep their thoughts to themselves.

Mercenaries have nothing to say to each other on the battlefield. They might be on opposite sides in the next battle. At a time like this especially, when they have to defend the barricade against the enemy's withering attack, they can't spare the time even to look at each other's faces.

Kaim knows nothing about this fighter called Toma. His voice sounds young. He probably has very little experience as a mercenary.

If a man grows talkative in the face of death, it means that, deep down somewhere, he has a weakness that prevents him from becoming a true soldier. A mercenary with even a hint of such weakness can never cheat death and live to see another day.

It is the law of the battlefield, and a man like Toma will only learn that law in the moment before he loses his life.

"We're done for. We'll all be dead in the morning. We'll have that 'silent homecoming' they talk about. I can't stand it. I just can't stand it."

In the darkness, no voices rise to second these sentiments. It's too late for talk like this. The day they chose the mercenary's path was when they should have resigned themselves to death.

They sell their lives for a little money. They prolong their lives, a day at a time, by taking the lives of one enemy after another. That's what a mercenary is: nothing more, nothing less.

"Hey... can anybody hear me? How many of us are here? We're all going to die together. We'll just be a line of corpses in the morning. Don't shut up now. Answer me!"

No one says a thing. Instead of voices, the silent darkness begins to fill with a tangible sense of annoyance.

Wordlessly to gather on the battlefield; wordlessly to fight the enemy; and just as wordlessly to die.

This is the rule of the mercenary, the "aesthetic" of the mercenary, if such an expression may be permitted.

But Toma has taken it upon himself to abandon that aesthetic.

"I knew it was hopeless from the start. Headquarters didn't know what they were doing. There was no way a strategy like that could work. You know what I'm talking about, don't you guys? We had to lose. It's a total mess. I wish to hell I had joined the other side. Then we could have gotten a mountain of cash for winning. We could have drunk ourselves blind. We could have had all the women we wanted. I could have gone either way on this one but I picked the wrong side to fight on..."

"Hey, you!" an older voice booms out of the darkness. An angry voice.

"Yeah, what?" answers Toma, his voice more vibrant now at having at last found someone willing to talk with him.

As if to crush his momentary enthusiasm, the other man goes on, "How about shutting up a while If you really want to run off at the mouth that much, I can send you to the next world a step ahead of the rest of us."

"I-I'm sorry..."

Instantly dejected, Toma falls silent and the darkness goes still again.

The stillness is charged, however, with a deep tension. Far deeper, even, than before Toma started talking.

The veteran warriors know: watch out for talkative men.

Being talkative means trusting in words--trusting too much in words.

Words are useless on the battlefield. You take up your weapon in silence, you steel yourself in silence, you fight in silence, you kill the enemy--or he kills you--in silence. All the mercenaries here have lived this way. All but the talkative one.

A soldier who clings too desperately to words may cling just as desperately to something else--to the sweet trap of betrayal, for example, or the seduction of desertion under fire, or the lure of madness.

Kaim has often seen pitiful mercenaries who, unable to endure the terror of being surrounded by the enemy, go berserk and attack men from their own side.

Will Toma prove to be another such case? The possibility is great, and no doubt the other men are thinking the same thing, too. In the stillness, they turn the same gazes toward Toma that they reserve for confrontations with the enemy, looking for any signs of change in his demeanor. The moment they perceive the slightest threat in him, a blade will soundlessly pierce the left side of his chest.

The silence continues. Not even the usual all-night cries of insects can be heard tonight as they were last night. Perhaps the insects knew enough to clear out in advance of the enemy's dawn attack. The thought reminds Kaim that he saw no birds in the area yesterday, either. Although animals came to snatch food when the men first built this fortification, there has been no sign of them for several days now.

Animals have mysterious powers of foreknowledge that humans lost. This becomes painfully obvious from any visit to a battlefield.

There can be little doubt that the animals have turned their backs on this barricade.

Right about now, in some distant forest, a huge flock of black birds may be taking wing in search of human corpses to strip off their flesh:

"It's feast time, boys!"

They already know, somehow. Once the sun is fully up, the battle will be over. If they don't get here first, they'll lose their feast to a flock from another forest. Their black bodies hidden against the night sky, those birds now are probably flying for all they're worth.

A voice in the night. Toma's voice.

Weeping.

"Listen, you guys... I don't know how many of you are out there, but we're all going to die in the morning... or most of us. Maybe one or two will live to escape, no more. Think about it: those are lousy odds. You've all been through this before. You're veterans, war heroes, you're probably not scared. But even so... even if you're not scared, don't you think this is stupid? Huh? Tell me! You've been through a lot more battles than I have, so tell me... what the hell are we here for? We don't hate the enemy, we don't owe the leaders on our side anything, but we've got to kill the enemy and follow our leaders' orders... and we're still going to end up dead. Tell me you guys... don't you think it's pointless? Don't you think it's stupid?"

The only response to Toma is the impatient click of a tongue in the darkness followed by someone else's sigh of annoyance.

"I can't take it any longer," says Toma. "I hate this..." and now he is sobbing.

"All I wanted was some money and maybe something better to eat and maybe nicer clothes. I would have been happy with that. What a mistake I made, taking work like this I never should have done it..."

Kaim keeps all his senses open for movement in the night.

Aside from himself and Toma, five other soldiers are crouching down in the darkness. Not bad: all are experienced warriors. They would not have been able to put up with Toma's whining otherwise. If they let themselves get angry and started shouting at him or grabbing him by the throat or whaling away at him, they would just end up consuming their strength and energy before their "work" started at dawn.

If this is an assemblage of men who know how to keep their silence, the chances for "life" are that much greater, assuming, that is, that the talkative, weeping man does not become too great a burden for the rest of them.

Still sobbing, Toma continues to curse his fate.

Suddenly, something is different: something stirs in the silence.

 _This could be bad,_ Kaim thinks, sharpening his attentiveness still more.

When dawn breaks, Toma will get in our way. Because of him, the possibility for "life" will wither. The mercenaries know that, and because they know it, they might do whatever it takes for them to secure for themselves even the slightest added change to live.

"I don't want to die here, I tell you. Not now, not here, like a worthless dog. You guys feel the same way, don't you?"

Moonlight shines down from a rift in the clouds.

For a split second, Toma's tear-stained face appears in the darkness. He is even younger than Kaim imagined from the sound of his voice. He is practically a boy.

The clouds hide the moon again, and thick black darkness enfolds everything once more.

A dull light stirs in the depth of the darkness.

Without a word, Kaim darts, wind-like, toward it. He was able to gauge the distance between himself and Toma during the flash of moonlight.

Kaim grabs Toma's arm. Something hard falls to the ground. The dull light flashes again, this time at their feet, and melts again into the darkness.

A knife. Driven by the fear of death, Toma was trying to slit his own throat.

Toma twists away and tries to free his arm from Kaim's grasp, but Kaim chops him in the solar plexus.

Without uttering a sound, Toma passes out.

* * *

With Toma slung across his back, Kaim strides through the darkness.

Eventually Toma wakes and thrashes his legs to get loose.

"Stop it! Let me go!"

Kaim lowers him to the ground.

"Every once in a while, the moon comes out. Check your direction when that happens. Go straight toward the setting moon." Kaim says gently.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's the only way you can get out of here."

Kaim has chosen the thinnest part of the enemy's encirclement. Of course, there is no guarantee that getting through here will save him. From now on, Toma will have to believe in his own luck and abilities.

"Are you coming, too?" Toma asks.

"No, I'm going back. You escape alone."

"Why? You come, too. Let's both escape. Come with me!"

Toma clings to Kaim's arm as he pleads with him, but Kaim gives him a hard slap on the check. The flesh of that cheek is too soft to belong to a veteran warrior. It is the flesh of a boy. A kid.

"You go alone."

"But why?"

"To live, that's why."

"What about you? You want to live, too, don't you? You should run away with me. You don't want to die, do you?"

Want to live? No, Kaim has no great desire to live. He lives because there is nothing else he can do. He lives because he has to. Toma is far too young--his own burden of life far too fragile--for him to know the pain of such a life.

"We live to fight. That's what mercenaries do."

"But..."

"Get the hell out of here. You're ruining it for the rest of us."

"You guys will never win this battle. So why not run away?"

"It's out job to fight."

With that, Kaim turns on his heels and starts back the way they came.

Toma stands there, watching Kaim move away, and a moment later he himself darts into the western forest.

To fight or to flee: Kaim cannot know which holds out the greater promise for life. He also believes it is better not to know.

Except--

"I hope you make it, boy." he mutters, walking on.

The eastern sky is beginning to brighten little by little. Soon the enemy's all out attack will begin.

From the western forest, a few birds take to the air.

Perhaps it means that a small-scale battle has started in the silence. Or that the poor young mercenary has been felled with his back to the enemy.

Kaim does not look back or break his stride.

He feels certain he has seen that talkative mercenary before. Before the war broke out, the boy was selling fruit in the market along the highway. He was a good boy, took good care of his mother, the women of the market were saying.

Live a long, full life, Kaim wishes for the boy as he himself walks on, glaring at the lightening eastern sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Child soldiers (or mercenaries) exist all the way back to the older times. Various cultures give different names and roles for them, and they traditionally involve with boys. In Ancient Mediterranean history, they serve as aides, charioteers and armor bearers to adult warriors. In the Roman Empire, several Roman legionnaires were known to have enlisted aged 14 in the army and the Medieval Era has the squires, young boys of twelve years of age although their role in actual combat is limited.


	10. Don't Forget Me Now, You Hear?

"Brother dear!"

The cry comes from behind as he wades through the post town's crowds.

At first Kaim does not realize that the person is addressing him, and he walks on in search of lodging for the night

But the cry comes again, all but clinging to him, "Brother, dear! Big Brother!"

This is puzzling.

He last visited the town eighty years ago. There can't be anyone here who knows him.

"Wait, Big Brother! Don't go!"

His puzzlement begins to take on an eerie edge, for the voice addressing him as "Big Brother" can only belong to an old woman.

Without letting his guard down, he turns slowly.

Just as he thought--it is an old woman.

Dressed in the clothing of a young girl, the tiny old woman is looking straight at Kaim with a bright smile on her face.

"I think you may have the wrong person," he says, allowing his discomfort to show.

"No I don't," she says with a big shake of the head and an expanding smile. "You're Big Brother Kaim!"

"What...?"

"What's wrong, Kaim, did you forget me?"

"Uh... well... I mean..."

He can't place her. Even if he were to succeed in doing so, he knows he has no acquaintances in this town. He wonders... could this be a chance reencounter with someone he once met on the road? But no, he is sure he doesn't recognize her, and strangest of all, why should this woman who looks old enough to be his grandmother address him as "Big Brother"?

"Don't pretend you don't know who I am, Kaim! You're so mean!"

She yells at him loudly enough that people in the crow stop and stare at them.

It is not just the fact that she is shouting, of course. People always have to shout to be heard in these crowded streets. That alone would not attract attention. The old woman's voice is different from a normal adult yell. It is like the innocent, unrestrained cry of a little girl who throws her whole body into her scream.

People turn shocked expressions on the old woman and quickly avert their eyes.

Their dismay is understandable. The old woman has her stark white hair tied up with a colorful ribbon, and her dress has the same floral pattern and floppy sleeves as a little girl's.

Many of the passerby look at the old woman with a mix of sympathy and pity on their faces.

Gradually, Kaim begins to comprehend the situation. This old woman has simply lived too long. This is why the past, locked away in her memory, has become realer to her than the reality before her eyes.

A middle-aged passerby tugs on Kaim's elbow.

"If I were you I would just walk away. Don't get involved with her. She'll be nothing but trouble."

"It's true," says the wife by his side, nodding. "You're a stranger here, so you don't know, but this old woman is senile. You can ignore her. She'll forget everything in five minutes."

They may be right, but the fact is this old woman knows Kaim's name.

In the little girl part of her mind, she thinks of Kaim as her "Big Brother."

He tries probing his distant memories.

He spent no more than a few days here so long ago. He got to know very few people, and there can't be any of those left who still remember him.

When Kaim goes on standing before the old woman, the nosy middle-aged couple become indignant. "You try to be helpful, and what does it get you?" snorts the husband.

"Let them work it out themselves," add the wife. "Let's just go." Which they proceed to do.

Winding up her voice for maximum shrillness, the old woman calls out to them as they walk off in a huff. "Don't forget me now, you hear?"

In that instant, Kaim's memory makes the connection.

The old woman greets his look of recognition with an expression of joy.

"Do you remember me now?" she cries. "I'm Shushu. It's me--Shushu!"

He does remember her, a little girl he met in this town eighty years ago.

Perhaps five or six years old at the time, she was a precocious little thing whose lack of shyness with strangers came from her being the daughter of an innkeeper.

Somewhere along the way, she had probably picked up a phrase she heard someone using, and so whenever a guest would depart after a number of days at the inn, instead of the standard "Goodbye" or "Thank you," she would see the person off with a smile and a cheery "Don't forget me now, you hear?"

Only now, when he is suddenly able to see the girl beneath the wrinkles, Kaim must avert his gaze from the old woman's face.

"What's wrong, Big Brother?"

He cannot bring himself to look directly at Shushu's vacant stare.

Eighty years have gone by! What can they talk about when a man who never ages meets a little girl from the distant past who has aged too much?

"Let me through here, please. Sorry, let me through here, please."

Forcing his way through the crowd, a young man rushes up to where Shushu and Kaim are standing. "Great-grandmother! How often do I have to ask you not to go out without telling me!"

After scolding the old woman, he turns to Kaim with an apologetic bow.

"I'm terribly sorry if she's been a bother to you. She's old and getting senile. I hope you can forgive her."

Shushu herself, however, angrily purses her lips and demands to know, "What are you talking about? I'm just playing with Big Brother Kaim. What's wrong with that?"

She peers at the young man and asks, "Who are you?"

The young man turns a sad gaze and begins to apologize again.

With a pained smile, Kaim stops him.

Kaim knows that, at times, it can be sadder and more heartbreaking for a life to be prolonged than for it to be cut short. Sad and heartbreaking though a life may be, however, no one has the right to trample on it.

* * *

"She just can't seem to get it through her head that she's old. Even if I hold a mirror up to her, she asks, 'Who's that old lady?'"

The young man, whose name is Khasche, further explains the situation to Kaim, "She might forget that she ate breakfast, but her memories from childhood can be clear as a bell."

Kaim nods in silent understanding.

Khasche and Kaim sit on a bench in the town plaza, watching Shushu pick flowers.

She is apparently making a floral wreath for her long-lost "Big Brother."

"BUt really, Sir, do you have time for this? Weren't you in a hurry to get somewhere?"

"No, I'm fine, don't worry."

"Thanks very much."

He smiles for the first time and says, "I haven't seen her this happy in ages."

The young man seems convinced that his great-grandmother has encountered in Kain a person who resembles someone she knew as a child. Kaim allows him this. He knows that Khasche cannot, and need not, imagine the existence of a person who never ages.

"Her health has really deteriorates lately. Whenever she runs a fever, we wonder if this is going to be the end for her and we prepare for the worst. But then sshe springs right back. Sometimes we joke that her mind is so far gone, she's forgotten to die."

Kaim sees the young man in profile. Khasche has a gentle smile on his face as he speaks of his great-grandmother No doubt, when he was little, she used ot hold him and play with him. Grown up now, Khasche watches over his great-grandmother like a parent watching his own child.

He calls out to her, "That's nice, Great-grandmother. I haven't seen you weave flowers together like that for a long time!"

Squatting in the grass with a fistful of flowers, Shushu answers, "That's not true. I made a wreath for him yesterday!"

Then she says to Kaim, "Isn't that right, Big Brother? You wore it in your hair for me, didn't you?"

Kaim cups his hands around his mouth and calls back to her, "I certainly did! It smelled so nice!"

Shushu's face becomes a mass of joyful wrinkles. Overcome with emotion, Khasche bows his head.

Kaim asks Khasche, "Are you the one who takes care of her?"

"Uh-huh. Me and my wife Cynthia."

"How about your parents? Or even your grandparents? Are they still living?"

Khasche shrugs and says, "I'm the only other member of my family left alive."

His grandparents both died in an epidemic twenty years ago.

His father lost his life in the way that enveloped this area ten years ago.

His mother, Shushu's granddaughter, aged more rapidly than her own mother, and the lamp of her life was snuffed out five years ago.

"So, my great-grandmother has had to keep holding funerals over the years--for her children and grandchildren. Before we noticed, she had become the oldest person in town. It must be lonely living that way..."

"I'm sure," answers Kaim.

"It might even be a kindness of the gods to let people fade out mentally when they've lived too long. At least that's how I've come to see it lately. You would think she would feel lonely to be left behind that way, but she's not lonely at all. To live long means you have a lot of memories. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to live in the world of your memories during the last days of your life."

Shushu stands up, her arms filled with flowers.

"Big Brother Kaim! I'm going to make a floral wreath for you right now! And if I have any flowers left over, I'll make one for this other person, too."

Kaim and Khasche look at each other with bewildered smiles.

"Why are you smiling like that?: Shushu asks. "Are you two friends now?"

She opens her wrinkle-ringed eyes wide in surprise, gives the two men a joyful smile, and collapses into the grass.

Khasche starts to run for a doctor, but Kaim grabs his arm and holds him back, saying, "You'd better stay with her."

Ironically, Kaim, who can never truly know what it feels like to age, has been present, for that very reason, at countless deaths over the years.

His experience tells him that Shushu will not recover this time.

Shushu is lying on her back where she has fallen, her armload of flowers now spread over her chest.

Her faces wears a smile.

"Wait just a minute, Big Brother Kaim. I'll make your wreath for you right away..."

Her mind is still lingering among her memories of the past.

Will she stay like this to the very end?

"Keep fighting, Great-grandmother! Don't let go!"

Khsche clings to her hand, tearfully shouting encouragement, but she may not even realize that this is her own great-grandson.

"It's me, Great-grandmother, it's me, Khasche! You haven't forgotten me, have you? I bathed you last night. You knew who I was then, didn't you?"

Khasche appeals to her with all his might.

But Shushu, a girlish smile on her lips, is departing for that distant world.

"I'm going to be a father soon, Great-grandmother! Remember? I told you last night. Cynthia has a baby inside. It's going to make you a Great-great-grandmother! Our family is going to grow--another person with your flesh and blood."

Still smiling, Shushu grasps one of the flowers on her chst in her trembling fingers.

She thrusts it toward Khasche, and in a voice no more than a whisper, she says, "Don't forget me now, you hear?"

Khasche doesn't understand.

Indeed, how could he know the little phrase she always used to speak long before he was born?

Kaim puts his arm around Khasche's shoulder and says, "Answer her."

"I know what you mean, Great-grandmother. I won't forget you. I will absolutely never forget you. How could I forget my own Great-grandmother?"

"Don't forget me now, you hear?"

"I won't forget you, Great-grandmother, believe me. I'll always remember you."

"Don't forget me now, you hear?"

Shushu closes her eyes and lays her hand on the flowers on her chest as if groping there for something. She seems almost to be trying to open the door where the memories are sealed.

A soft breeze moves over her.

The flowers adorning her chest dance in the wind along with the memories. Surely among those memories is the Kaim of eighty years ago.

Kaim snatches at one of the petals dancing in the wind, enclosing it in the palm of his hand.

Shushu will never open her eyes again.

She has left on a journey to a world where there is no past or present.

The only ones she has left behind are Kaim, who will go on living forever, and Khasche, who is about to welcome a new life into the world.

Clinging to her corpse, Khasche raises his tear-stained face to look at Kaim.

"Thank you so much," he says to Kaim the traveler. "Thanks to you, my Great-grandmother was so happy to be picking flowers at the very end."

"No, it wasn't thanks to me," Kaim says.

He closes his fist on the petal in his hand and says to Khasche, "I'm sure if she had made a wreath, she would have given it to your sweet new baby."

Khasche shyly cocks his head and mutters, "I hope you're right."

But then, smiling through his tears, he declares, "I'm sure you are."

"About that promise you made to her--be good and don't forget her."

"No, of course not."

"People go on living as long as they remain in someone's memory."

With these words, Kaim begins to walk slowly away. Behind him he hears Shushu's voices.

_Don't forget me now, Big Brother Kaim, you hear?_

It is the voice of the little girl from eighty years ago, ringing ever clear, sweet and innocent, declaring farewell to the man who will travel life forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Elderly beginning to act like young children is not fiction, but also part of reality. Alzheimer's does wonder to the brain as the elderly age, since one of the common symptoms is memory lapses and different thinking and reasoning.


	11. Letters from a Weakling

Once there was a woman who came from a foreign land to marry into an old family.

Her husband was from a tiny village in the mountains but he was working in a thriving harbor town abroad when he met and fell in love with her. At the time he asked her to marry him, his father in his home country collapsed and died. Being the eldest son in his family, the young man had no choice but to return to his homeland--taking her with him, of course.

Her name was Myna. This was not a name used by the women of his homeland.

Indeed, her name was not the only thing about her that was different.

The color of her skin, hair and eyes, and the language she spoke were all different.

Had the young man's hometown been a harbor city where people of many different lands cross paths, there would have been nothing unusual about this. In such places there were any number of homes that welcomed foreign men and women into the family, generation after generation.

"But this is about as deep in the country as you can get." the young man told Kaim, sighing, on the night he made Myna his wife.

Kaim had rushed here all the way from the harbor town in the far country to attend the wedding.

At the banquet, the young man had given Kaim a look, and the two had slipped away from the festivities. They were standing in the garden, looking up at the night sky.

"When the eldest son marries, his wishes are of no importance. What matters is 'family.'

The two families negotiate the engagement, and a bride is chosen who is acceptable to the groom's parents. That's how it was with my parents, and my grandparents did the same."

"I know what you mean." Kaim said with a nod.

Judging from the formal wedding ceremony, it was easy to imagine the highly conservative nature of the area, and just as easy to imagine that the relatives had not welcomed Myna into the family.

"Alex." Kaim said to the young man.

"Yes?" the young man answered, still looking up at the sky.

"You are the only one who can protect Myna, you know."

"I know that much, Kaim."

"Myna is a wonderful girl."

"I know that, too, of course."

The three were good friends. Kaim and Alex had worked together offloading ships at the same pier, and also together they had often gone to the neighborhood where Myna worked in an outdoor stall. Even now Kaim retains the bittersweet memory of Alex and Myna struggling to communicate in each other's languages.

"You know, Kaim," Alex said that night under the sky, "I think you sensed it, too, but Myna was drawn less to me than to-"

Kaim cut him short. "Never mind," he said with a pained smile.

Of course Kaim knew how Myna felt. And if he had responded to her feelings, she and Alex would not have been married here today.

But Kaim had held back. Instead, he had urged Alex to pursue his love for Myna and helped the two come face to face. He felt no regrets about having played the part of an unlikely Cupid for them. Destined to continue his never-ending journey, Kaim was unable to love Myna in return.

One of Alex's uncles stepped out of the house, drunk.

"Hey, Alex, what are you doing out here?" he growled. "The groom can't be absent from the reception!"

"Sure, I'll be right there," Alex said, turning toward his uncle.

Kaim tapped him on the shoulder.

"Make Myna happy, Alex."

"Leave it to me," he answered with a smile.

"Come on," said the uncle. "Hurry up. The groom's supposed to sit there the whole time! The entire family is here, and we're going to drink the night away!" He grabbed Alex's hand and dragged him back into the house.

The man was all smiles with Alex, but when he glanced at Kaim, his borderline polite smile could not disguise the gleam of distrust in his eye for an outsider. Kaim was sure he had noticed that same gleam, though perhaps not as openly displayed, in eyes that alighted on Myna.

So that was the kind of village to which Myna had come as a bride.

"You'd better make her happy, Alex," Kaim called out again toward his friend's receding form. "I'm counting on you!"

* * *

It was three months later when Alex came to visit Kaim at work on the pier.

"I'm in town on a buying trip, so I thought I'd stop by to say hello," Alex announced.

But, judging from the fatigue evident on his friend's face, Kaim had a pretty good idea of his real reason for coming here.

As casually as possible, Kaim asked, "How is Myna doing?"

With a feeble smile, Alex replied, "After the wedding...things happened."

Myna had been accepted neither as a member of the family, nor as a resident of the village.

There were too many differences: in daily customs, in culture.

But the one thing that made Myna too different for the tiny village was the brown color of her skin.

"If only she could speak with people! Myna is trying her best to learn our language, but my mother and the other relatives make no attempt to learn hers. Not so much as a 'Good morning' or a 'Thank you.' They insist it's up to the daughter-in-law to do all the adapting."

Still, Myna was working hard to draw closer to Alex's family and birthplace. She would be the first one out to the fields in the morning, work without a break until the sun went down, and do sewing until late at night. She would try to talk to people in the local dialect that Alex had taught her, using gestures and body language, and she would apologize profusely, with abject smiles, whenever she failed to understand what they were saying.

Kaim could easily imagine Myna going through these exertions, which made Alex's report all the more painful to him.

"You should come to visit us now and then, Kaim. Myna would love to see you, too." Kaim responded vaguely with a silent nod. When Alex added, "I want you to come and cheer her up," he said nothing in reply.

"What's wrong, Kaim? Are you angry?"

"I'm not going to visit."

"Why not?"

"You promised me you'd make her happy, remember? We agreed that you're the only one who can do that."

"But still..."

"Sorry, I haven't got time for this. I have to get this shop loaded before it sails at sunset."

With this curt dismissal, Kaim turned away and continued working. Alex stared at him from behind, looking frustrated and confused. Kaim could feel his friend's gaze on his back. Because he could feel it, he kept working without another backward glance.

Eventually, Alex gave up and left.

Neither man spoke words of farewell.

* * *

A year after the wedding, Myna gave birth to a son.

The boy had brown skin like his mother.

He had just started crawling when Alex visited Kaim again.

There was talk of a divorce, Alex said.

"There's nothing wrong with our relationship. Myna and I love each other, that's for certain. But my mother and the relatives say there is no way they can accept a brown-skinned child as the family heir. His existence supposedly harms the marriage prospects of my younger brother and sister, too. So they want us to send the baby to Myna's family. It's gone that far..."

Alex had lost a great deal of weight. He was obviously living with much pain every day, trapped as he was between "family" and Myna.

None of this made sense to Kaim.

However "trapped" Alex might be, as long as he was firm on what was important to him, there could only be one answer to his family's demands, and he should be able to arrive at it without anguish or confusion.

"I know how strong you are," Alex sighed, speaking to Kaim's back as Kaim went on hoisting huge, spin-snapping crates in silence.

The longshoremen here were well paid for handling crates on their own--loads that it would take three ordinary men to lift. The daily wage was calculated by the number of loads each man lifted, so asking for help would result in a pay cut.

For this reason, Kaim and the others never complained or asked for help. They would lift even the heaviest loads by themselves.

Alex had been like that, too.

If someone nearby asked him, "Are you going to be okay with that?" he would be all the more determined to do it on his own.

"Fine, fine," he would smile and, gritting his teeth, he would lift the giant load.

But Alex was not like that anymore.

"I'm starting to think that, maybe, in the long run, tying Myna down to a life in my village, is just going to make her unhappy. My relatives say they'll support Myna and the baby. So it's not as if I'd be abandoning her or chasing her away. It's just that, for both our sakes, starting a new life..."

Having finished piling crates on deck, Kaim turned toward Alex for the first time. He was looking down at Alex on the pier.

"And you're all right with that?"

"Huh?"

"If you're convinced it's the right thing, then go ahead and do it. It's not for me to interfere."

Alex's featured distorted under the impact of Kaim's words.

Kaim said nothing more but went back to work.

His anger and frustration were reaching the boiling point.

Alex had no idea that Myna had been writing to Kaim on occasion since shortly after the wedding.

About the hardships she had been facing in the home of her husband's family, she said not a word.

Instead, she would spell out how happy her current life was and declare repeatedly how much Alex loved her.

Always, the letters would end like this: "I'm sure you, too, must be living happily, Kaim."

This was why Alex's report of the situation at home had filled him with such intense anger and frustration.

He had never answered Myna's letters.

He felt certain that if he were to write to her--whether with words of encouragement or comfort, or even playing along with her sad lies--something important that gave her spiritual support would snap in two.

"Come see the baby, Kaim," Alex pleaded. "Myna would be thrilled if you'd do that."

Instead of responding to Alex, Kaim called out to him from on deck,

"See that crate over there? Can you lift it?"

The crate near Alex was of the same size and weight as the one that Kaim had just loaded onto the ship.

In the old days, Alex would not have hesitated to carry it up to the ship, every muscle in his body shuddering.

Now, however, Alex gave Kaim one timid glance and, smiling to hide his embarrassment, said only, "Not me."

Kaim said nothing more.

He felt strongly that their long friendship had come to an end, though in fact, for Kaim, whose life would go on through all eternity, it had been nothing more than a momentary acquaintance.

Kaim has been on his endless journey ever since.

Now and then he thinks back to those bygone days.

Both Alex and Myna long ago came to dwell among his distant memories--the kind of memories that revive with a deep sense of bitterness.

And they are there to this day.

* * *

Alex made his third trip to see Kaim a year after the baby was born.

Having wasted away to a mere shadow of his former self, Alex stared vacantly at Kaim, and his voice lacked all intonation as he announced Myna's death.

She had killed herself.

"Hanged herself in the barn..."

Kaim was amazed at his own detachment as he took in Alex's words.

Myna's letters had stopped coming several months earlier. Either she no longer needed to spin those sad, little lies about being accepted by Alex's family and the townsfolk, or she had lost the strength to invent them anymore. In effect it was the latter, Kaim was learning now.

"To the very end, she could not make anyone accept her--my mother, my family, or the town," Alex said tearfully. "She was all alone, finally, to the very end..."

Without a word, Kaim punched Alex in the face.

Alex seemed to know and accept that fact that the punch would be coming. He did nothing to resist or defend himself. The fist hit him full-on and sent him sprawling in the road.

"Why?" Kaim demanded to know. "Why did you say she was all lone?" and when Alex righted himself, he smashed him in the face again.

Alex began coughing violently and uncontrollably, and when he spat up a gob of blood, a broken back tooth came out with it.

Kaim knew well enough that Alex had been suffering, too, that he had been engaged in a desperate struggle to do something about being trapped between "family" and "wife." Otherwise, he would never have wasted away so dramatically from the brawny young man he used to be.

As well as he knew this, however, Kaim could not forgive him.

He had promised. He had given his word. He would make Myna happy. He would protect her.

Kaim could never forgive Alex for failing to make good on his oath.

Wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, Alex dragged himself to his feet. "I know how strong you are," he said to Kaim as he had once before, but this time his words took on a far sadder tone.

"But let me tell you this, Kaim. My mother and my relatives and the others...their way of looking at things is not completely crazy. To live in peace and quiet in the country, you have to follow the country's special rules. It just so happens that one of those rules was not to accept a 'bride' like Myna. I was born and raised in that village, and I know the village code, know it all too well, which is why I have been in such pain all these months. I'm a weakling, I suppose. In your eyes, I'm probably so weak you want to spit on me. So laugh at me! Hit me! Despise me if you want to! Come on, hit me again!"

Alex thrust his face at Kaim for more punishment, and Kaim threw another punch.

This one landed squarely on his nose--and may have broken it.

Alex crumpled to his knees. The blood that gushed from his nose was blacker than the blood from his mouth. Alex looked up at Kaim with a smile of self-derision.

"Myna should have been with you. That's what I think. If she had married you and not some weakling like me, she'd still be alive."

With a wordless, strangled cry of rage, Kaim lunged at Alex, grabbing him by the collar and hoisting him to his feet.

Another punch.

And still another.

Kaim was not planning to stop punching Alex.

Now, though, with Kaim's hand still fastened to the front of his shirt, Alex looked straight at Kaim for the first time since coming to the dock.

"Why didn't you ever answer Myna's letters? That's all she was hoping for--a letter from you."

So he knew. Alex knew everything.

"It's terrible out there in the country. Anybody who wants to can find out who wrote letters and who got them. Everybody out there is like family--everybody but Myna, that is."

If Alex had wanted to, he could have quashed Myna's letters easily. Then, not one of her sad, little lies would have reached Kaim.

But instead, Alex had read the letters, resealed the envelopes, and sent them to Kaim one after another. He had internalized Myna's sad, little lies and started looking for Kaim's answers even before she did.

Kaim stopped his fist in mid-air and asked, "How could I have possibly answered her?"

"Why not?" Alex retorted. "You knew how trapped she was feeling. You must have known how much encouragement one word from you could have given her."

"But you were Myna's husband."

"Yes, that's true, but you were always the one deepest in her heart. I knew that, and because I knew it, there was only one thing I could do."

_No, that couldn't be!_

Astounded, Kaim lowered his fist as Alex said to him, "I wrote to her. I pretended I was you, and I wrote her letter after letter. 'Be strong,' I told her. 'Keep your spirits up.' 'I'll come to see you soon,' You're too strong, Kaim, so you can't understand the feelings of weak people. But I don't have that problem: I'm weak. I understood how a weakling like Myna felt."

Alex cried, the blood streaming from his nose and mouth.

"There is one thing I don't know, though, Kaim. I don't know whether Myna actually believed that the letters I wrote were from you, or whether she knew what I was doing and pretended to believe. I wonder. Was life in my village so painful to her that she couldn't go on living there without pretending to believe?"

Kaim made no attempt to answer Alex's question.

Slowly, he let the strength go out of his clenched fist, and released his grip on Alex's shirt.

Alex drew a step back from him, then took another step, putting distance between them before his final revelation.

"There was one letter, just one, that I didn't send to you. That was three months ago. It was the first letter in which Myna begged you for help. She said she wanted to run away and asked you to come and save her. As soon as possible. To rescue her and the baby."

That was the letter Alex threw away.

Posing as Kaim, he wrote a two-word answer:

"Be strong."

The day after she read the letter from Alex, Myna hanged herself in the barn.

Kaim stood rooted to the spot, crestfallen.

This left him momentarily defenseless.

Alex shot his fist at Kaim's solar plexus, though his feeble blow could hardly be called a "punch." The pain it inflicted might have been greater for Alex's own fist than for Kaim's superbly conditioned muscles.

"What an idiot I was! 'Be strong!' Such words might have meant something to somebody like you, but to burden a weak person like Myna with them... no, they could only break and crush her."

Alex gave another tearful, self-disparaging smile and thrust his face toward Kaim.

"So hit me! I don't give a damn! Hit me all you want! Beat the hell out of me! But let me ask you this, Kaim. If I had sent her last letter to you, would you have finally answered that one? Would you have been able to accept Myna in all her weakness?"

Kaim did not know how to answer this question. Nor did he raise a clenched fist to Alex again.

So ended the story of Kaim and Alex.

Alex turned and walked away, but Kaim could not bring himself to call out to him. He simply stood there, drained of all emotion, and watched him go.

Alex did, however, turn to face Kaim again when he had put enough distance between them so that Kaim could barely make out his voice.

"I can tell you this much, Kaim." he shouted. "I am going to raise that boy of mine! I'll make him into a man of my village! I may have been too weak to be a husband, but as a father I'll do better. I'll make him happy."

Kaim returned his words with a silent nod. Alex allowed the hint of a smile to show on his badly swollen face. He then turned on his heels once more and strode away.

Kaim never saw Alex again.

* * *

Every now and then, Kaim remembers Alex and Myna as he proceeds on his endlessly long journey. When he thinks back on what he himself was like in those days, wanting only to be strong in all things, the memory is a bitter one.

If only he had been the person he is today!

The present-day Kaim would not have rejected such human weakness. How he can accept the fact--sometimes with a pained smile, sometimes with a genuine heartbreak--that everyone is weak.

If only he could begin his journey again!

Myna might not have had to die.

But this is no more than a hopeless dream.

He meets them only once, and they are gone forever--the mortals, the humans, the ones without eternal life. This is what makes them all the more dear to him. This is what makes his breast burn for them.

Aware now that he has failed to love human weakness throughout his battles and his wanderings, Kaim turns his steps toward Alex's old village.

Alex himself, of course, is long since dead.

But Alex's descendants he can tell at a glance. They have brown skin.

Brown-skinned youths are the ones in charge of the village festivals.

Brown-skinned old women teach girls how to weave floral decorations.

Brown-skinned children and those who are not brown play together in all innocence, free of care.

Perhaps this can comprise a tiny epilogue to the story of Alex, Kaim, and Myna.

The graves of Alex and Myna lie side-by-side atop of a low, wind-swept hill.

Kaim picks flowers from the field and offers them at the doomed couple's graves before returning to the road.

What is human strength after all?

Kaim still does not know the answer to this question.

And this is why again today his journey must go on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Cultural prejudice over skin and behavior has devastating effects to the affected person, and depression over the lack of acceptance is quite common. However, overturning and changing such values can happen and can shape the future of that society for the better or for worse.


	12. Evening Bell

Rolling farmland spread out before him, Kaim harvests vegetables, wielding his hoe with deep concentration.

The sky on this autumn evening is a deep crimson.

"Maybe we should call it a day," says the heavyset woman who owns the farm. She drops an armload of vegetables in to the basket.

Kaim nods and wipes the sweat from his brow.

"You're a tremendous help." says the woman. "Look how much we've done!"

Kaim responds to her praise with a slight nod.

"You still can't remember where you came from?" she asks.

"Afraid not..."

"Well, the way you work," she says with an easy laugh. "I don't care if you're from the moon!"

"Seriously, Kaim. What will you do when the harvest ends?"

"I don't know yet. I haven't made up my mind."

"There's plenty of work to do here even in winter." she says. "It'd be fine with me if you wanted to stay on a while longer..."

"Thank you." says Kaim.

She herself is a hard worker and a warm human being.

This is not a life that allows for luxuries, but going out to the fields at dawn every day and ending work as the sung goes down softens the heart even as it toughens the body.

As they prepare to leave the field, a small bell begins to ring.

The hour is still somewhat early for the church's evening bell.

Kaim glances down to the road at the base of the hill. A funeral procession advances slowly along the road, the mourners surrounding a horse cart bearing a coffin.

The woman sets her hoe on the ground, removes her headscarf and clasps her hands together. Kaim scans the hills to find that all the other workers on the surrounding farms are doing the same thing: clasping their hands, bowing their heads, and closing their eyes in the direction of the passing funeral.

Kaim follows their example.

The old man leading the funeral procession swings the little bell.

Its ringing echoes among the hills.

The mourners pass in silence.

The women in black veils, the men in black coats, heads bowed.

The children in the rear elbow each other playfully, unaware of the meaning of death.

When the funeral has passed, the woman raises her head and blinks her moistened eyes.

"The one who passed away is going home." she says.

"Home?" Kaim asks, somewhat startled.

"Home...to the soil...to the sky...to the sea. Like all living things."

Kaim nods in silent recognition.

How many deaths has he seen in this endlessly long life of his?

All those people leave this world of ours and we never see them again. In that sense, death is an infinitely sad event.

If, however, we think that in dying they go back to their homes somewhere, a certain comfort and even joy comes to mingle with the sadness.

But Kaim--who can never grow old or die--can never go home.

The woman scoops up a handful of earth and says with deep feeling, "Many lives have become a part of this soil--the lives of tiny living things we can't see, the lives of withered grass... If you think about it that way, our vegetables are made for us by the lives of many others."

"I see..."

"Can I ask you a favor, Kaim?"

"Of course..."

"If I should die while you're working here, would you scatter some of my ashes on this field for me? A handful would do."

Kaim is at a loss for words. He forces a smile.

Husband dead, children on their own, the woman lives by herself on the farm.

Kaim knows that if he goes on working here, like it or not, he will eventually have to watch over the woman's deathbed, even if she were to die one hundred, two hundred years from now.

The church bell rings, signaling the end of the workday.

The woman clasps her hands before her as she did when the funeral passed.

"I have been allowed to come safely through one more day. For this I give my heartfelt thanks. May tomorrow be another healthy day for me..."

Her voice in prayer resounds forcefully in Kaim's breast. This happens every time he hears the church's evening bell: the conviction overtakes him that he does not belong here.

"Ma'am," he says to the woman after the last chime resounds.

"Yes?"

"Wouldn't you say that people give thanks for each safe day, and pray for good fortune in theday to come, because they know their lives will end?"

"Wha-what's wrong, Kaim?"

"I'll be leaving the village when the harvest is over."

"Why, all of a sudden...? What's happened?"

"I have n oright to live here." he says.

Ignoring her stupefaction, Kaim lifts the vegetable basket in both arms.

He takes another good, long look at the setting sun.

"Where will you go, Kaim, if you leave here?"

"I don't know. Somewhere."

"Are you just going to keep wandering like this?"

"I don't have anyplace to go home to." says Kaim.

Hoisting the basket onto his shoulder, he starts down the hill

His back glows red in the setting sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ringing a bell for the decease is a practice that happens many times throughout history, and is quite associated with those practices of Christian's burial procession.


	13. Portraitist of the Dead

She always has mourning clothes with her. That way, she can begin a portrait as soon as a request comes in.

And so it is today.

Having slipped into her mourning dress in the shed of the pier, she boards the downstream ferry. Her hands are full: one holds the case with her painting tools and the other the garment bag for her mourning dress.

She has heard that a rich man lies dying in a town twenty kilometers downstream.

Her name is Rosa.

"It's a race against time," she says with a grim smile. "I have to start as soon as possible, before the face changes."

"Changes how?" Kaim asks.

"It's hard to say."

There is a deepening strain to Rosa's smile.

"But I know it when I see it--when the person has gone from 'this side' to the 'other side.' Once they've gone over, I can't paint them--at least not in a way that will please the family. It just can't be done."

Rosa is a professional portraitist of the dead.

The custom of preserving death masks is now widely practiced in this area. Families too poor to hire an artist daub the face of the newly-deceased with dye and preserve the loved one's deathbed expression on a cloth pressed against the dyed face. Some families make a death mask with plaster. Only the wealthiest families can afford to hire a professional like Rosa, so that lurking in the background of an individual's death there can be a variety of disputes.

"I have heard families quarreling over the inheritance behind my back even as I sit there sketching the dead person. One widow presented my portrait of her husband to the court to prove that he had been poisoned. Another time, some loan sharks waited until the moment the man died and charged right into the house. One husband tried to spit on his wife's face as soon as she gave up the ghost. Apparently, she had been unfaithful to him for years."

Rosa tells her stories with utter detachment. She reveals no emotion at all.

This, she says, is indispensable to becoming an outstanding portraitist of the dead.

"You have to open your sketchbook and get your brushes going with the bereaved family members right there, overcome with grief. There's no way you can produce a good portrait if you become emotional or allow yourself to be swept up in the emotions of the other people in the house."

Kaim responds with a silent nod.

His only connection with the woman is to have boarded the same boat and sat at the same table in the café on deck. Only a few minutes have passed since she started volunteering her stories, but that is all it has taken for Kaim to perceive the hint of nihilism lurking in her beautiful features.

"The more respectable artists despise painters like me."

"Why is that?"

"Well, half of them accuse us of making our living from people's deaths. The other half look down on us for not being moved by what we do. I see their point. I mean, the emotion are what give rise to all the arts, whether it's painting, sculpture, music, or literature. We don't have emotions like that: we're nothing but craftsmen."

Rosa speaks without a hint of either self-mockery or pride.

Her tone suggests that she is merely stating the obvious in an obvious way.

Kaim takes a sip of his rye whiskey, and Rosa drinks from her rose-petal tea.

The boat makes its leisurely way downstream.

The season is spring.

The river is high with snowmelt, and white water birds have settled on its surface.

"Strange," Rosa says with a giggle, "when I first saw you, I thought you and I must be members of the same profession. Which is why I took the initiative to speak to you..."

Kaim gives her a strained smile. He knows nothing about painting and he is fairly certain there is nothing about his appearance that would cause him to be mistaken for an artist.

It well could be, however, that in the profile of this man drinking whiskey alone in the afternoon Rosa has recognized the hue of a nihilism like her own.

Or then again, she might have perceived the shadow of "the other side" clinging fast to Kaim's back.

Until a few days ago, Kaim was on a battlefield.

There, he witnessed the killing of many enemies and many allies.

But he was unmoved by any of it.

Such youthfulness had long since vanished from him.

Though outwardly unchanged, Kaim has lived through several centuries.

Rosa says that she is in her mid-thirties and in her tenth year since becoming a portraitist of the dead, which apparently puts her near the beginning of her career.

"If you wouldn't mind," she adds, "I have a few more things I'd like to discuss with you."

When Kaim nods silently in compliance, Rosa thanks him and gives him her first heartfelt smile of the day.

Portraitists of the dead are never present while the subject is dying. The very fact that such a professional has been called means that the person's death is imminent. And so theirs is seen as a presence of ill omen and even defilement.

A family member or friend who has been at the bedside dares to broach the subject quietly in another room.

"Don't you think it may be time to call a painter?"

The answer--whether "Too soon for that" or "I think you may be right"-- is delivered in guarded tones.

Introduced to the family by the church, the portraitist never enters the house by the front door. Rather, he or she goes around to the back and is shown to a room where the sun cannot penetrate. There, the painter changes into mourning clothes and waits for the announcement of the death.

Eventually, a quiet knock on the door is followed by a summons to appear, and the painter dressed in mourning sets to work.

Not all deaths occur at the end of long lifetimes, of course. All too often the painter must depict the face of one who has died young of illlness or accident.

The face that emerges in the artist's sketchbook radiates the delicate vivacity of one who has just crossed the border dividing life from death, one who has only moments before transited from "this world" to the "other world."

The work presented to the family is an oil painting done from the sketch, but Rosa believes the sketch itself is a far more authentic portrait of the dead.

"There is nothing quite like the atmosphere in a room where someone just died. How to put it? It's as though the flow of time has stopped, or time itseslf has melted into the very air... the sobbing and the wailing sound as if they might last forever, the only movement of time in all this being the way the face of the dead person emerges little by little onto the blank white page of the sketchboook."

She hands him her thick sketch pad.

"See," she says, showing him countless faces of the dead. "This is two years' worth."

Many of the faces are peaceful, but others are full of agony, and all without exception possess a mysterious presence. They differ unmistakably from faces in sleep. Neither, however, do they look dead. They seem as if they might open their eyes at any moment or just as easily crumble into ash.

They hover, men and women alike, on the very brink of death.

"After the body has cooled, it's too late. It's also too late if the family has begun making its preparations for the funeral. The game is won or lost in those very few minutes following the death itself. All we can do is start sketching--as efficiently and expeditiously as possible."

With a painful smile, Rosa adds, "In the eyes of the family, though, that makes me a cold-hearted woman."

Kaim turns the pages of her sketchbook, saying nothing.

He would like to tell her that it is the same on the battlefield.

There, no one has time to mourn the death of a soldier. If you're busy shedding tears instead of doing the next thing you have to do, you end up being one of those forced to travel to the other world.

The final sketch in the book is unfinished: the face of a young girl.

The general outlines of the hair and face are sketched in, nothing more.

Kaim looks questioningly at Rosa.

"My daughter," she says softly.

"But why...?"

"A portrait painter of the dead reaches full maturity in the profession when she is able to paint a member of her own family. Which only makes sense. I mean, how self-serving is it if you can be coldly objective toward the death of a strange but not toward a member of your own family?"

Her daughter died two years ago, the girl's three short years of life brought to a sudden end by a bad flu that was making the rounds.

"I was holding her hands almost until the moment she died," Rosa says. "I was in tears, calling her name and pleading with her to come back to me, not to die."

After the doctor looked at her with a shake of his drooping head, though, Rosa released her daughter's hands and opened her sketch book. Wiping her tears, she picked up her pencil and tried to sketch her daughter's face.

"But I couldn't do it. The tears came pouring out of me no matter how much I wiped them. I simply couldn't work."

Kaim turns his gaze on the unfinished sketch again.

Some areas of the white paper were wavy--perhaps where Rosa's tears had fallen.

"I guess I'm not qualified to be a portraitist of the dead." she says with a smile, glancing down at the river.

"But still... if I had to choose one work of art to leave behind, this would be it."

The boat gives a blast on its steam horn.

Frightened, the birds on the river leap into the air in a great mass.

Kaim closes the sketchbook and returns it to Rosa.

He considers complimenting her on the excellence of the drawing, but chooses silence instead. Such praise, he feels, could be a sign of disrespect for her work, for Rosa herself, and for her dead daughter.

"I didn't mean to bend your ear like this," she says. "I'm sorry."

She stands and peers at Kaim once again.

"Really, though, you look like a member of my profession."

Kaim gives her a strained smile and shakes his head.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have said that," she responds with a strained smile of her own.

"And you probably won't like my saying this, either, but please call me if you ever need a portraitist of the dead."

"I won't need one," Kaim says. "I have no family."

"No family? Well, then, when your own time comes..."

With a little chuckle, Rosa leaves. Her right hand grasps the case with her painting supplies, her left the garment bag with mourning clothes.

Unfortunately, Kaim will never need her services. He will not--cannot--go to the "other" world just yet.

On the long, long road of his life, how many deaths must he encounter?

The steam horn blasts again.

The boat gradually lowers its speed and edges toward the river bank.

The landing draws closer.

When he leaves the boat, his journey will begin again.

It will be a long journey.

The next battlefield lies far beyond the mountains that tower in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: A deceased person with his/her portrait made is called "mourning portrait" or "deathbed portrait" and it is practiced in past. True to its form, mourning portraits are done mainly by well-to-do people in remembrance of the dead. It can also be a "coffin portrait" due to how similar it is with the mourning portrait.


	14. Elegy Island

This happened a long, long time ago.

On a small island--which has since perished--they had an odd custom.

They mourned their dead with song: with elegies.

The songs would play without ceasing from the last moments before death, through the funeral, to the burial.

Elegies would be sung for many purposes: to ease the grief of the family, to recall the legacy of the dead, to appease the soul of one who died under stressful circumstances, to celebrate one person's having lived a ripe, old age, or to evoke anger to another's pointless death.

There were no fixed melodies or lyrics. Apparently the songs were sung without lyrics at all.

"No documents have survived, so all we can do is assemble oral histories." sighs the archaeologist as she views the island from the deck of the ship.

The people of that island country had no writing system, which means they had no way to leave behind signs or evidence of their lives.

"I wish we could at least interview a few survivors, but there weren't any. Every single person was killed."

The research team's archaeologist is a young woman in her twenties. Her country is the one that destroyed the island. It happened while her ancestors, seven generations back, were still young people.

"I hate to bad-mouth my own country," she says with a shrug, "But they really didn't have to go that far."

"That far" is no exaggeration.

Her country prided itself on its overwhelming military force. For it to gain mastery over the tiny island would have been as simple as twisting an infant's arm.

But her country believed in oppressing its neighbors with force. The leaders were thinking more of those neighbors than of the island itself when it launched its all-out attack. The island was a mere object lesson.

It was scorched from end to end.

Every human being on the island--from newborn babies to elders on the verge of death--was killed without mercy.

"It's odd, though," says the young woman with a grim smile. "There are hardly any records left from that time, even in our country."

"I suppose what they did was so terrible, they didn't want their descendants to know about it."

Her remark prompts some older scholars on board to clear their throats, at the sound of which she snaps her mouth shut.

"Sorry." she whispers, "You're not much older than I am: you probably don't want to hear about all this old stuff anyway..."

"I do, though."

"What interest can a sailor like you have in these boring academic matters?"

Kaim only shakes his head in silence.

Suddenly things become very busy on deck. The boat is approaching the island and has entered a stretch of intricate channels where the skills of the crew will be tested.

The boatswain calls Kaim.

"Oh, I'm sorry." the woman says. "I shouldn't be monopolizing your time. You've got work to do..."

Even as she apologizes, the talkative young archaeologist asks Kaim, "Do you mind if I ask you one last question?"

"Please, ask away." he replies, stopping in his tracks.

She looks around to make sure no one is listening and whispers, "I'm sure this is your first time taking a research team over..."

"Uh-huh."

"And you first time going to the island?"

"Well, yes..."

"So you probably don't know about some of the bad stories they tell about this place---that some scholars who go there fall under a curse. Like, they get sick while doing their research on the island, or they become mentally unstable after they get home. I've heard some even killed themselves."

"You mean a long time ago, right?"

"Right. This is the first research trip in fifty years. Up to then, every time they sent out a team, one or two of the members would suffer the curse. This is why they put a stop to them all these years. So I'm a little scared myself..."

She sends a mock shudder through her body. "I just thought I'd ask if you could teach me some magic spell for getting back safely...

Kaim looks straight at her--not merely taking in her appearance but searching for the person deep inside.

"You'll be fine," he says.

"You think so?"

"I'm pretty sure you'll be okay."

She looks at him questioningly.

"If you hear singing, though." he adds, "Hum along with it."

"What do you mean?" she asks, her expression increasingly uneasy, but Kaim says nothing more.

"Get over here _now_ , Mister!" the boatswain shouts at Kaim, who heads for his station.

He did tell the woman one white lie, though.

This is not his first time coming to the island.

He has been here many times before.

His first trip happened a long, long time ago.

* * *

As the archaeologist said, the island's elegies had no fixed melody or lyrics. They were all sung extemporaneously and never repeated.

A hundred deaths required a hundred elegies.

Nor did mourners agree in advance on the nature of their elegy before they stated singing. At first, each would sing his or her own song expressing his or her own feelings about the deceased. Eventually, the jumble of songs would come together into a single melody without any one sing taking the lead.

In the culture of this island that had no writing, there was, of course, no musical notation. There were no instruments for accompaniment, either. Each mourner, in grieving for the loved one, would give voice for a peaceful last journey, and a song would emerge.

Kaim's travels first brought him here when the island was at peace, which is to say, centuries ago.

He happened to arrive just after the death of a village elder. For three days and nights, an elegy was sung around the dock. The island people's song, which shook the darkness and reverberated all across the clear, blue daytime sky, left its mark with a certain ennobling comfort in the breast of Kaim, a man for whom fate had decreed that no one would ever sing an elegy.

To think that such an island had been burned to the ground!

The people fled in all directions at once, and were murdered one at a time.

It was an absolute bloodbath.

Kaim knows about the atrocities that accompanied the butchery--things that were not handed down to the generation of the young archaeologist.

Had it wished to, the woman's country could have taken control of the island in a single night, but instead it used its military power to chase down each of the island's inhabitants over a period of several days as if carefully filling in the blank spaces in a color book.

The island became enveloped in elegies.

At first, while the living still outnumbered the dead, voices in elegiac song all but shook the island with their volume.

As the days went by however, and the dead came to outnumber the living, the sobbing voices in song grew ever fainter.

When the battle reached its final phase, the few remaining islanders, who had been cornered in the island's northern tip, fled into a large cave.

They resigned themselves to death.

All that was left for them to do was pray that they might be allowed to die with some degree of peace.

But even this small measure of hope they were unable to wring from their attackers.

The army of the archaeologist's country went for maximum brutality. They entered the cave with every weapon at their command, and they dragged out and killed one islander per day.

Today it was an old man.

The next day it was a young man.

The day after that they tortured to death a young mother with an infant at her breast, and the following day the infant they tore from her arms was put to death.

The elegies resounded without interruption.

The singing voices that escaped from the cave invaded the ears of the soldiers who were carrying on the massacre. Those soldiers with kind hearts collapsed one after another, or they went mad and left the front line.

Song was the final weapon of the islanders, who had no other means to fight.

They went on singing as they struggled against starvation, thirst, and their own fears.

The commanding officer of the anti-insurgency force ordered his men to fill in the mouth of the cave. If they buried the people alive, he thought, the singing would no longer be audible.

Nevertheless, faint singing continued.

It went on, day after day.

Rainy days, clear days, daytime, nighttime it continued, but no longer without breaks, which gradually increased in length.

The singing went beyond being an elegy for a single person and became a song suffused with the sorrow of all the living things on the island.

About the time the season ended, the last thin thread of singing died out.

The army left the island.

Not a single record of these military operations was left.

Never again did anyone come to live on the island.

* * *

The first research team in fifty years is plagued by difficulties.

One scholar after another collapses.

Almost every day, someone is sent out to the vessel anchored offshore, sick.

All the scholars moan with pain, blocking their ears.

The situation is exactly what it was before the island was sealed off from research.

Kaim knows exaclty what is happening.

The ocean breeze sweeping across the island sounds like a song.

The branches swaying in the forest sounds like a song.

The birds in the trees sounds like a song.

The babbling of a brook sounds like a song.

The treading of boots on piled-up fallen leaves sounds like a song.

The crashing and receding of waves on the shore sounds like a song.

The elegy for the island that people sang with every last bit of life they could dredge up from inside themselves, now is being sung by the island itself.

"Please stop, I beg you, please stop..." the scholars cry out in their delirium, covering their ears. "I don't know what we did. It was our ancestors, not us."

The scholars who moan this hear anger and sorrow in the constantly resounding elegy.

What they say is true: it is not their fault.

But they have been given no knowledge of what happened on this island so long ago.

Sometimes, not knowing can be a profound sin.

They should prick up their ears and listen all the more.

This is what Kaim has always done.

The elegy being sung by the island is not merely hurling hatred and anger at them.

The island is not trying to torture members of the younger generation like them who are without sin.

Rather than blocking their ears, they should listen.

If they do so, the message will reach them.

For the island is telling them,

"You must know the truth.  
You must know what actually happened on this island so long ago."

* * *

The investigation ends much earlier than originally planned.

Most of the research team have returned to the ship, their health broken, and some of the more seriously ill members have been sent home. It is no longer possible to continue the work.

The young archaeologist who spoke to Kaim on the way in is one of the few who have persevered to the end.

"Thanks to you." she says to Kaim.

As soon as she climbed from the launch into the ship, she saw Kaim standing on deck and hurried over to him.

She looks haggard, but her fatigue is clearly less physical than mental.

Still, her eyes harbor a strong-willed gleam.

"Did you hear the singing?" he asks.

"I did," she says with a nod, looking back at the receding island. "It was so sad!"

Just as he had thought: she was able to open herself to the sadness.

"Did you sing along with it?"

"Yes, I did that, too--partly because of what you said to me, but I also found myself humming the same tune quite naturally."

Kaim nods and smiles at her.

This is the first time he has encountered anyone with the heart to hear the island's elegy.

"This time when I get home," she says, "I want to do some more serious research on the war. It's something I have to do. I almost feel I don't have any choice in the matter."

"I'm glad to hear that." he says.

"I might turn up some facts that my country finds inconvenient, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to learn the truth--to know what actually happened."

The ship emerges into the open sea.

A single white bird flies out from the island as if seeing the ship off on its hourney.

Tracing a great arc against the blue sky, it releases one high, ringing cry.

No longer an elegy, this is a song of joy and forgiveness signaling the dawn of a new age.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Cultures being lost in history due to war happens, a lot. This is far common in the Ancient and Medieval times, either out of spite of their enemies or part of the extermination of such culture made by opposing forces.


	15. Seth's Dream Part 1

O, wondrous beast, Aneira--

Proud descendant of the white-whinged clan!

You alone were my irreplaceable companion.

Would it anger you to hear me call us two of a kind? Were we not, in fact, a perfect combination, you and I? Bound together by a single thread--that gossamer thread we know as loneliness...

Aneira,

I owe my life to you!

Not, of course, that you "saved" my life in the ordinary sense of the word. Mine is not a life that can be lost under any circumstances. It is an irrevocable burden. I will not die--I cannot die--and therefore my life was not for you to save.

O, Aneira!

What you saved, I now see, was not my life but my heart.

Back then--long, long centuries ago, I was a pirate--the only woman pirate on the open seas.

Seth Balmore: that name was known to all who plied the sea. Some spoke my name in fear and trembling, while others voiced it with deepest admiration.

Some even called me the "Righteous Buccaneer," nor were they far wrong, I'd say.

The pirate ships I commanded had _rules_ \--rules that were clear and strict.

We targeted only one kind of vessel, those opulent passenger ships the wealthy boarded for pleasure cruises. We would put a bit of a scare into the passengers, of course, maybe rough them up a little, but killing was strictly forbidden. All we did was squeeze a few drops of treasure out of the purses of those who had more money than they knew what to do with. We traded our booty for cash with shadowy dealers, and the money we shared in the world's dens of poverty.

I would cringe at being called a "champion of justice," but we prided ourselves on being far more than "villains."

I became a pirate for one simple reason:

I hated the law, and I hated even more those who flaunted the law for their own self-aggrandizement. In a word, I wanted a life of freedom.

Whenever I stood at the prow of a pirate ship slicing its way through the waves, and I viewed the vast ocean stretched out beneath the clear blue sky. I felt enveloped in the joy of having taken limitless freedom in my own two hands.

Ture, I need not traffic in the fear of death and aging known to all who count as human.

And because I will neither age nor die, infinite time means for me infinite freedom.

Not bad, wouldn't you say?

I would spy the ship that would be our day's quarry.

I was always the first to board it, springing lightly onto their deck with a shout.

"I am Seth Balmore! Now be good and hand over your money and valuables!"

Then, taking the booty we had snatched, my men and I would raise a cry of victory and leap back into our ship.

I was absolutely free.

Nothing stood in my way.

Eternal life overflowing with freedom--

Not bad, wouldn't you say?

"Righteous Buccaneer'?!' What kind of fancy-pants nonsense is that? How about 'Pirate Bitch'?"

Of course one always hears such jealous ravings in all walks of life, but especially so in the thuggish world of pirates.

Needless to say, I knew I had many enemies.

Even a child would realize that being called a "Righteous Buccaneer" could only increase the number of who hated me among such raping and pillaging brigands as pirates of the sea.

But I didn't care about that.

I could be stabbed with a knife or blasted with a cannon and still I would not die.

"Immortal Seth," they called me, and it was literally true, not just a figure of speech.

"I won't get in your way," I told the other pirates, "but I won't let you get in mine, either!"

I was afraid of nothing and no one.

I lived the way I wanted to live, and wouldn't--or shouldn't have--let anyone interfere with me.

I went wrong only once, but that was all it took.

In a moment of carelessness, I let them capture me.

Of course, that alone was nothing for me to be afraid of. As I keep mentioning, I can never age or die. It would have done them no good to try killing me--and they knew it. The most they could do would be to rough me up a little and threaten to make it worse for me next time. They had to do _something_ to show their men how tough they were: they couldn't just let me horn in on the pirate game and pretend it never happened.

So I said,

"Hurry up with the torture, will you? I haven't got all day."

We were in a cave on a desert island.

I was in handcuffs and leg irons and surrounded by half a dozen huge men, all well-known pirate captains. One of them was holding a long, thick chain.

"I get sick to my stomach just looking at your sweaty faces. Come on, hurry up and beat me with the chain. Or would you rather strangle me? Whichever you choose, hurry and get it over with."

The men laughed out loud.

"'Hurry and get it over with'?" said the leader. "Too bad for you, Seth, but this punishment is not the kind that can be hurried. I'm just sorry we can't stay with you to the end."

"Yeah," chimed in another man, "unlike a monster like you, we humans don't have all the time in the world."

"Okay, men, let's make it fast, the way the lady wants."

Licking his lips, the man with the chain approached me, and two others grabbed my arms from the sides.

They were not going to use the chain as an instrument of torture but to rob me of my liberty.

They chained me to a gigantic boulder in the cave.

They were laughing so hard they could hardly contain themselves.

"Just what you need, eh, Seth?"

"It's the end of the road for you."

"We can't shoot you, we can't stab you to death, so we'll just lock you up."

"We'll never come back to this island again."

"And even a half-baked pirate like you knows this place is not on any sea lanes."

"No fishing boats even."

"And right about now, your men have gone off looking for the wrong island."

"We're the only ones who know we brought you here. Not even our crews knoew where we are."

"Nobody's coming to save you, that's for sure."

"You'll be in here forever."

"Can't move a muscle, and you can't even die."

"All by yourself."

"For the rest of eternity."

With that, the men walked out of the cave, leaving me there with a single lantern.

"Cowards!" I screamed. "Don't run off like that! Don't do this to me!"

But the only response was the hollow echo of my own voice in the cave.

The lantern the men left behind was not meant as a kindness, but rather the opposite. It was a prop in their little drama: when it finally ran out of oil and went dark, it would impress on me the weight of eternal solitude.

As long as the lamp kept glowing, I was filled with rage for the men.

But when the oil was running low and the flame began to flicker, a deep anxiety assaulted me.

Unable to move, I stared blankly at the flame.

Eternity:

This world has no such thing.  
Or perhaps it should not have.

Solitude:

I was always alone. Or, more precisely, I always ended up alone. It was my destiny. I could be surrounded by companions whose feelings matched my own perfectly: I could share the deepest love with another: but in the end I would always have to lose them. Do you know what it feels like to see countless others succumb to death while you yourself are on the road of endless life?

Ah, but in your case, Aneira, you do have some idea.

As I watched, the lamp in the cave went out.

A world of darkness spread out before me.

And there I was: alone.

No more would I taste the sorrow of parting.

But neither would I be able to taste the joy of meeting. Eternally. Without end. Alone.

I did not try shouting.

People shout and scream for one reason only: because they want someone to hear them. Because they believe there is someone somewhere who will hear their cries.

I did, however, shed tears.

Which is not to say I wept. There is no way that the immortal women pirate Seth Balmore would ever break down and cry.

A tiny tremor went through the darkness: that is all it was.

And then I noticed. Oh! Tears are coming out of me.

Really, that is all it was.

The hours passed.

Or perhaps it was days.

In the darkness I lost track of the flow of time.

There was something else I lost track of.

If all there was left for me to do was to stay by myself, struggling against eternal solitude, incapable even of rotting away, then what was the purpose of my living in the world?

Perhaps the men who trapped me here had been right: unable either to age or die, perhaps I was some kind of monster.

Then why was such a monster living in this world?

What was I supposed to do here?

I did not know the answer to that.

I would never know the answer, to the end of my never-ending life.

I felt frustration.

Sorrow.

But above all, fear.

Eternity was frightening to me.

Solitude was frightening to me.

I might have been trembling.

Or, without even the energy for that, I might have been utterly drained.

Whatever it was I was feeling, that is when it happened.

Aneira: that is when you first appeared before me.

A tiny burst of light softened the darkness.

And from the light, almost before I could wonder what it was, there came a voice:

"Are you, too, trapped in the prison of solitude?"

"Who--who is that?"

In the light, a flash of white wings.

Then, with a sudden increase in size and brightness, the light seared my eyes. Accustomed to total darkness, my eyes could not stand the glare, and for an instant they could not see anything at all.

Grimacing, I clamped my eyes shut before daring to open them little by little.

There before me hovered a pure white, glowing beast.

Its white wings were breathtakingly beautiful.

How beautiful you were, Aneira!

But yours was not a florid beauty. No, it was subtly different.

Your beauty wore a cloak of loneliness.

"I am like you," you said.

And when I cocked my head to look at you with puzzlement, you continued.

"I have been looking for someone like you for a very long time."

You spoke slowly, majestically:

"O, immortal woman pirate! You and I share a single destiny."

You knew who I was!

"Together let us escape from this solitude and make our way together," you said, your eyes locked on mine.

 _Escape from this solitude_ \--the words continued ringing in my ears. But I did not know who you were. I could not even be sure _what_ you were. Nor could I leap joyfully at the invitation of one I could not tell as friend or foe.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I am Aneira of the white-winged clan."

"White-winged clan?"

I had heard the name before. The white-winged clan were said to be wondrous beasts that had become extinct in the distinct past.

"I have heard that the white-winged clan died out long ago."

"I am the last of the blood line."

"The only survivor?"

"Indeed. As I said, the last."

"Which is why you speak of solitude?"

At that point, almost before I knew it, a weak, almost self-mocking smile crept over my face: I felt myself lowering my guard as I spoke to you. My chains, however, were digging ever deeper into my flesh and shackling my heart as well.

"You used the phrase 'prison of solitude' before. It's true. This is a prison. Being alone for eternity is a prison without bars."

You nodded at these words of mine, Aneira, in silence.

But then you said, "I was in a prison, too, until just now."

"I'm sure it's true. To be the only living survivor..."

"I have spent far too long a time alone."

"I know what you mean."

In the legend, members of the white-winged clan are thought to live a thousand years. But even if you were to live on for several centuries, as sole survivor you could never meet a female member of the clan of the white wing and hope to make children with her. The clan will never rise again.

The sole survivor must live out the remainder of his days alone.

"In order to conquer this unbearable loneliness," you said, "I would need someone to make her way with me.:

Then you looked hard at me and said, "O, pirate woman, are you not of the same mind?"

I nodded in agreement.

But then I made a point of smiling and said as casually as I could, "In other words, you're lonely!"

Your beautiful face softened and you said with some embarrassment, "I wonder..."

"According to the legend as I have heard it, the clan of the white wing are proud and love their solitude."

This only increased your embarrassment and you said, "Solitude has its limits."

That did it.

I decided to trust you then and there.

"Well, if that's how you feel, you should come right out and say it: 'I want company!'"

"Company?"

"All right: a companion."

"A companion?"

"Exactly. So it's decided: I'll team up with you."

That ended all hesitation. Just as you saw me in one to make your way together with, I put my full trust in you.

"Let's go wild on the high seas!" I cried.

"Isn't that what 'make our way together' means?"

"You mean that I should become a pirate?"

"You don't like the idea?"

You paused for the space of one breath and chuckled softly.

"I've always wanted to give it a try."

No sooner were the words out of your mouth than you leaped at me.

With one bite you cut through the thick chain that held me down.

O, wondrous beast, Aneira,

proud descendant of the white-winged clan!

This was how you and I first met.

In the nine hundred years since then, we raged over the open sea more wildly than I ever had before.

When I stood at the prow of our pirate ship in search of prey, you were always there beside me.

We became irreplaceable partners, friends, companions... _family!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: The impacts of social isolation become worse when people are placed in physically isolating environments. For example, solitary confinement can have negative psychological effects on prisoners – including significant increases in anxiety and panic attacks, increased levels of paranoia, and being less able to think clearly.


	16. The Hero

The hero was home from the war.

He had performed gallantly on the battlefield, advancing to the rank of general, and made a triumphal entry into the village of his birth.

The villagers welcomed him with a festive celebration. The grown-ups were treated to drinks beginning in the afternoon, and the children received sweet confections. The cattle and sheep in the pastures that supported the villagers' livelihood, whether because they were excited by the unusual commotion or were welcoming the hero in their own way, sent especially shrill cries reverberating into the blue summer sky.

"General, you are the pride of our village!"

Obviously full of pride himself, the head of the village thrust out his chest as he delivered his congratulatory address in the welcoming ceremony. "To think that the foremost hero in the army came from this tiny village is so incredibly exhilarating and gratifying. I am sure our ancestors are overjoyed as well!" The throng crammed into the village square burst forth with cheers and applause.

"According to the official figures released by the army the other day, General, you brought down at least two thousand enemy soldiers with your own hand."

A thunderous roar shook the square.

"Come to think of it, the population of this village is less than a thousand. This means, Sir, that you managed to bury more than two of these villages' worth on your own. How fortunate for us that you were not one of the enemy! If by any chance there had been a warrior of your caliber on their side, we'd all be resting in the hilltop graveyard by now!"

A few of the women frowned momentarily at this remark, but the men, full of liquor, responded with an explosive laugh.

Sitting stage center, the general lightly stroked his dignified beard. No one present knew that this was his habit whenever he was perplexed. When he left his village to join the army, he was just an ordinary soldier a long way from growing a beard.

"General, you are truly the savior of our army and, indeed, of our entire nation. I understand you will be leaving for another battle tomorrow, but we all hope that you will thoroughly enjoy yourself on this rare visit to your birthplace!"

The village chief ended his greetings and withdrew to the wings, whereupon the village's number one entertainer bounded onto the stage in the most comical way he could manage.

"Dear General!" he cried, running over to where the great man was seated and going down on his knees, "Oh, hear my plea!"

The general looked at him uncertainly.

"Is there any possibility that you would lend me the sword at your side, if only for a moment?"

Perplexed though he was by all this, the general, impelled by the audience's applause and cheers, and handed the man his tasseled and jewel-encrusted sword.

The man bowed deeply as the sword entered his outstretched hands and again he cried, "My gratitude knows no bounds!" Pretending to stagger under the weight of the sword, he came to the front edge of the stage and held the weapon aloft.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, I will re-enact the even that raised our dear General's fame to the heights in a single bound--when he hacked eighteen of the enemy into little teeny tiny bits!"

The audience cheered wildly, and the man, with exaggerated movements and commentary, swung the sword in a great arc. The audience knew exactly what he was doing. The general had not only made a name for himself for his strategic prowess but was also widely acclaimed as a warrior on the battlefield. He did not rely solely on his weapons but, in the end, leveled his opponents with his sheer physical strength. This, too, was a matter of the utmost pride for the villagers.

"Here we go! One man down, two men down, flip the sword back, three men down, fourth man slashed diagonally right through the shoulder, fifth man's head goes flying. Oof! Then three at once--sixth, seventh, and eight man, what a bother! I'll just skewer you like _this_..."

The man thrust the sword through three imaginary opponents and the crowd went wild.

The general, too, broke into a smile and applauded.

When he was through clapping, though, he stroked his beard again.

* * *

"I'm sure you can understand how I felt at the time, sitting up there on that stage," the old general says to Kaim before taking a sip of water form his leather pouch.

His magnificent beard is completely white, so distant are the past events he is recounting.

Kaim nods in silence, and the general continues, as if mulling over every word, "The more you know about war, the more you feel that way."

"I'm sure the villagers meant well. They just wanted to pay homage to their hometown hero."

"No, of course. They weren't being the least bit malicious. My village has the nicest people in the world, which is exactly why I found the whole thing so painful. I couldn't stand it after a while."

Hacking eighteen men to bits--

The deeds of a hero are related in numbers.

Surely the man who playfully swung the general's sword on stage that day could never have imagined the ones who lost their lives on the battlefield: the agonized expressions on their faces, the curse in their eyes as they stared into nothingness.

"But that's all right, too. People who live peaceful lives don't have to know about such things. That's what people like us are for: to keep their lives far away from the battlefields. Don't you agree? Thanks to us and our killing of enemies, the people we've supposed to protect don't have to know anything about the bloodiness of war.

Unless you believe that, what's the point of people killing each other?"

Kaim says nothing in reply. Without either affirming or negative the old general's words, he stares vaguely at the general's troops.

"What'd you say your name is? Kaim? I suppose you've killed more enemy soldiers than you can begin to count."

"There is no way I could count them all."

"I thought so. You have a flawless build, the kind that can only be tempered on the battlefield. Only a man who has survived one battle after another can carry himself the way you do with complete naturalness."

How does a man like you find himself driving a horse cart over a mountain pass?

Kaim is ready to leave without answering if the old man asks him such a question.

But the general inquires no further into Kaim's background. Instead, there is a sense of relief in the smile he bestows on the sight of Kaim resting his horses at the pass.

"I was sixteen the first time I went into battle. After that, I just kept running from one fight to another until I made it all the way to general. At first, I remember the faces of the men I crossed swords with and killed. Even if you don't try to remember them, they get carved into your memory. I had terrible nightmares. And try as I might, I could never seem to wash off the stench of the blood that splashed on my face and hands. That was a hallucination, of course, but it got so bad once that I spent a whole night in a river trying to wash myself off."

The general paused a moment to think about his story, then went on.

"But after a while you get used to it. You get used to fighting and killing over and over again. Your body, and your mind, and your heart: you just get used to it. That's how people are. So I stopped having nightmares. I killed all the enemy soldiers I could lay my hands on, and I forget every one of their faces. It's the same for you now, too, Kaim, isn't it?"

"Maybe so."

"It's like a curse. If you don't get used to it, your heart breaks. On the other hand, if you do get used to it, your heart probably ends up breaking someplace deeper down."

The general casts a fond glance toward his resting troops. Then, slowly shifting his gaze far down to the foot of the mountain, he says, "So that's what it was like for me back then, when I returned to my birthplace in triumph."

* * *

For the final event in the welcoming ceremonies, several children mounted the stage.

"And now, in honor of our hero, the children will present to the General a floral wreath more marvelous than the greatest medal there ever was!"

The audience went wild again.

When the children put the wreath on his neck, the general favored them with a warm smile--the first honest smile from the heart that he had managed since climbing onto the stage.

"And finally, as a special treat for the General, who has been galloping from one battlefield to the next far from his native place, the children's chosen representative will read his own original composition spelling out the joys of the peaceful life of the village."

With a look of grim intensity, a small boy barely old enough to go to school unfolded his composition and, gripping it in two hands, began to read aloud from it, straining to make himself heard.

"First I' going to write about one of the nicest things that happened to me.  
At my house, we have a pasture with lots of cows and sheep.  
One cow had a baby two days ago.  
I helped my daddy stroking the cow's back  
with a handful of straw while she was having the baby.  
That makes the cow warm up so it's easier for her to give birth.  
The baby was born just before the sun came up.  
It was a tiny baby, but it could already stand on its own legs.  
A baby! Wow!  
I'm going to take care of this baby until it gets big.  
Dear little calf, hurry and grow up, okay?"

The general had tears in his eyes.

"Now I'm going o write about one of the saddest things that happened to me.  
That was when my Grandma got sick and died.  
She was such a nice Grandma.  
I know her sickness made her feel bad,  
but she was always smiling when I was around.  
She let me hold her hand when she died.  
I watched her face the whole time  
because I knew I wouldn't be able to see her anymore  
and I wanted to remember her even after I grow up.  
She just kept smiling and smiling for me right to the very end.  
That's why she is always smiling when I think of her.  
Are you looking down on me from the sky, Grandma?  
I will never forget you as long as I live!"

Tears were streaming down the general's face.

When the ceremony ended, the general left his village and headed for the town where army headquarters were located.

There, he wrote a long letter to the king, and he gave his sword to his most trusted lieutenant.

The general had decided to retire.

* * *

"This was as big a surprise to me as it was to anybody. But when I heard that little boy's essay, it occurred to me: what makes us really human is to celebrate each life that comes into the world and mourn each life that is lost. I didn't need medals anymore. I didn't need the honor of being allowed into the presence of His Majesty anymore.

I wanted to be a real human being again.

As a result, overnight I went from being the village hero to being reviled as a traitor."

The general turns to face Kaim and asks, "So, are you going to mock me as a coward who ran away from the battlefield, or blame me for being a deserter who betrayed his own patriotism?"

Kaim turns a gentle smile on the old man.

"Neither," he says. "As a soldier, you made the wrong decision, but as a human being you made the right one."

The general strokes his white beard and says, "My habit has changed, too. Nowadays, I find myself stroking my beard when I'm embarrassed."

The two men look at each other and smile.

"Okay, back to work," says the general, standing with a grunt.

He calls out to his troops, "Alright, men, it's all downhill from here. Let's give it one last push and get back to the village before sunset."

The "troops" under the general's command consist of thirty sheep, not one of whom is likely to take a person's life.

"Tell me, Kaim, are you planning to go back into battle at some point?"

"I don't really know," he replies.

"I'm content with herding sheep for now," the general says.

"I don't have the least regret for the decision I made that day. It would make me happy to think this could be a kind of lesson for you."

With this parting remark, the general turns away from Kaim and begins walking.

The sheep amble along after him in newly reformed ranks.

Standing at attention, the general raises his right arm and waves his troops on.

"Forward, march!"

The command he had once delivered to tens of thousands of men in the battlefield now echoes pleasantly among the mountains of his native village.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just because you survived a war physically does not mean that you will also survive with your mental health intact. And if it is a bit too vague, just ask any soldier in real life who survives in their real battle and successfully killing someone, doubly so if the battle participated is also very traumatic.


	17. The Bread of Grandma Coto

There is no way to keep the village from becoming a battlefield.

The enemy forces have crossed the northern pass and made their camp close by.

The home forces are here, too, sending one unit after another into the village to resist the enemy's attack.

The place is a powder keg.

Ringed by mountains were two highways intersect, the village is a crucial focal point for transport.

It cannot be allowed to fall into enemy hands, while its capture is essential to any hopes the enemy might have for victory in the way. Long years of fighting have come down to this one major battle.

It is a battle that must be waged.

The logic is clear, simple, inevitable. And it will transform this tranquil village into a battlefield at any moment.

The army has ordered the villagers to evacuate.

Noncombatants can only get in the way.

"The enemy wants to settle this before the weather turns cold."

"So, what does that mean? Another month? Two weeks?"

"Got your stuff packed? No sense getting caught in the middle and killed. Talk about dying for nothing!"

"Better forget about taking any pots and pans with you. Pack as light as you can and get away as far as you can."

"Think of all the generations our ancestors guarded our houses and land. I hate to think it's going to turn into a wasteland when the fighting starts..."

"There's nothing we can do about it. It's just plain bad luck, that's all."

"We just have to hang in there till the war is over and come back when we find out who won."

"The main thing is to get out now."

"Right, it's all we can do."

"We've got to stay alive. Better not hope for anything more than that."

"Why the hell does this have to happen to us?"

The villagers leave a few at a time, beginning with the first ones to find temporary shelter.

By the time the forest is lightly tinged with red, the village is practically deserted.

The only ones left are old folks who live alone and have no one and no place to run to.

The army has built a crude refugee camp for any evacuees able to cross several mountains to reach it. The aged poor stagger in with little more than the clothes on their back.

The only one left in the village is Grandma Coto.

* * *

As a mercenary, Kaim first met old Coto shortly after he joined the unit protecting the village.

He was on an inspection round at the time when he spotted an old woman working in the fields. She turned out to be Grandma Coto.

A soldier with him yelled at her, "Hey, old lady, enough of that!"

Another man shouted, "You'd better get out of here now if you want to stay alive. The fight's going to start in two or three days. How many times do we have to tell you to go to the damn refugee camp?!"

But old Coto stayed hunched over, digging in the dirt.

Obviously, she was not harvesting anything.

If this had been a time when the grain had ripened and she was hurrying to harvest her crops, it might have made sense, but she was just turning the soil as if she had forgotten that a battle was about to start here at any moment.

"Is the old bag deaf? Or just senile?"

With a disgusted look, the captain called over to Kaim, "Hey, new guy! Do some about this one! Drag her to the refugee camp if you have to tie a rope around her neck! We can't have her wandering around out here. She's just going to get in the way when the fighting starts."

The captain's tone was arrogant.

The more cowardly a commanding officer is, the more arrogant and overbearing his style becomes--and the less he is able to conceal his nervousness--when a battle is nearing.

Kaim strode silently toward the old woman in the field.

"We'll go on ahead!" the captain called out behind him, but he did not turn around.

Only a few days would be needed to decide the outcome of the battle for the village, which was a reflection of how violent it promised to be.

For this reason, working the fields now was pointless. Even the most carefully cultivated patch of ground would be crushed under the soldier's boots. A harvest next year was out of the question. Nor was it even clear how many years it would take to restore the village to its former tranquility.

When Kaim approached her in the field, the old woman kept working and said, "Don't try to stop me!"

She looked--and sounded--much tougher than she had seemed from a distance. She might have been one of those stubborn, cranky old folks that people kept their distance from when the village was at peace.

"You're not going to evacuate?" Kaim asked.

"What the hell for?" she spat out.

"They've built a camp you can go to..."

Old Coto gave a snort and said to Kaim, "You're a new one. I've never seen you before."

"Yes..."

"So you don't even know what the camp's like. You soldiers have nothing to worry about."

"What do you mean?"

Old Coto said nothing but pointed toward the steep mountain standing like a painted screen on the west side of the village.

Kaim asked, "Is that where the camp is?"

"Hell no. You have to cross that mountain and another one to get to it. Nobody my age can walk that far. What's the point of building a camp in a place like that? How many old folks do they think are going to make it over there? They might as well leave us out in the hills to die like in the old days."

Kaim was at a loss for an answer. Continuing her digging, the old woman grumbled, "That's how the government does everything..."

She was clearly angry, but perhaps less angry than sad.

"You're on an inspection tour, right? Well, don't let me stop you..."

"No, you see..."

"You're not going to get me to go to any damn refugee camp. That's all there is to it. I'm not going anywhere. This is the village I was born it, and I've lived here all my life."

"I know how you feel, but this place is going to turn into a battlefield soon."

"I know that."

"So then..."

"So what?"

Kaim was at a loss for words again.

When she saw that, she smiled and said, "You're a sweet young man. Kind of unusual in a soldier."

Her expression had softened for the first time.

Once she stopped being so prickly, the smile she produced was actually rather endearing.

"When this place turns into a battlefield, people will die. Lots of them. I know that much, don't worry. But I have work to do, soldier boy. Telling me to leave my work and run away is like telling me to die. So if I'm going to die anyway---and it won't be long now--I want you to let me do what I want to do. You shouldn't have a problem with that."

Kaim fell silent. Not because he was at a loss for words yet again, but because he believed she was right. "If I'm going to die anyway," she had said. Knowing that he would never be able to speak such words, he had no choice but to bow silently to her will.

"All right, then, run along there, sonny. I've got work to do."

"What are you doing now?"

"See for yourself!"

"Sorry, but I don't know much about farm work."

"Like all the other soldiers," old Coto said with a smile. "The only thing you people ever think about is killing enemies. You don't know anything about nurturing life." She let a hint of sorrow show again.

Perhaps somewhat taken with Kaim, however, she favored him with an explanation.

"I'm planting seeds," she said.

Grains of wheat: you sow them in the fall, they mature over winter, shoot up under the spring sun, and turns the fields golden in summer.

"I always do my planting when the northern mountain peaks turn white. Every year. And this year's not going to be any different."

Would the seeds mature in the trampled fields? Kaim had his doubts.

Grandma Coto, however, displayed not the least anxiety or resignation as she scattered seeds in the newly-turned soil.

Her hands performed the age-old ritual with ease and naturalness, as if to impress upon Kaim the fact that what she was doing this year was nothing more nor less that what she had done every year before.

As a result, Kaim's next words emerged with a smoothness that he himself found somewhat surprising.

"What if the seeds don't grow?"

"Then I'll just do it again next year. And if next year's bad, I'll do it agian the year after that. You have to plant the seeds. That's how I've lived my life. If you don't plant, nothing will grow. See what I mean?"

"I think so..."

"Whether there's a fight or not, it doesn't matter. I'm just going to do what I have to do. That's all."

She spoke with certainty, her wrinkled face softening into a smile as she added, "You can't eve enjoy a meal if you know you haven't done things right."

"You're saying that this is what gives your life its meaning?"

This was the question to which Kaim had long searched for an answer.

For what purpose had he been born into this world?

What was he supposed to accomplish here?

He had continued to roam through his life's endless journey without knowing the answers to these questions--indeed, _because_ he didn't know the answers.

"I don't know about deep stuff like that" Grandma Coto said shyly.

"I just mill the wheat I've harvested, and bale bread in the fall. That bread is really special. Nothing tastes as good as the first bread you make with the wheat you grew that year.

That's what my grandson looks forward to every year. I can't just decide to take a year off now, can I?"

"I see what you mean."

"No you don't," she declared. "You're nothing but a damn soldier."  
Her face had turned hard again. There were no more smiles from her that day.

* * *

When Kaim returned to the barracks, a soldier who had been stationed in the village for six months or more said to him, "That old bag hates our guts."

"Because we've ruined the village?"

"That's part of it, I suppose, but it's got deeper roots than that for her."

Grandma Coto had lost her entire family to war. First her husband died in the war forty years earlier, then her song and his wife in the war twenty years earlier, and now the one grandson they had left was taken to fight in the current war.

"What's his unit?" Kaim asked the soldier.

The man gave a helpless shrug and named a unit that had been sent to an area with the most intense fighting.

"Talk about bad luck! The fighting's so bad out there, if it was me, I'd take my chances on being executed for deserting under fire. He's got maybe a 50-50 chance of coming back alive. No, maybe 30-70."

If her grandson were to be killed, Grandma Coto would be all alone in the world. She would have no one to feed her bread to.

"It must be tough to be left alone at that age," the soldier said. "Looking at old Coto, I can't help thinking of my mother back home. There's no way I can let myself get killed. She'd never stop crying. Same for you, too, eh, Kaim?"

Kaim said nothing in reply. He had no right to put himself in the same category as this soldier.

* * *

The battle started three days later.

The enemy army's attack was even fiercer than expected. The defense forces had no choice but to put everything they had into the fight.

Kaim slipped away from the battlefront and headed for Grandma Coto's house.

He found her leaving for the field as always.

She gave no sign that she was afraid of the fighting. People who know exactly what they must do, and who refuse to be distracted by anything else, can be strong beyond all reason.

Kaim saw now that there could be far greater strength in a finite life than in one that lasted forever. Because he sensed this so deeply, he stood before her, blocking her way.

He lifted the tiny old woman in his arms and carried her bodily back to her house.

"What are you doing? Let go of me! I'm not going to follow some soldier's orders! I have work to do!"

"Yes, I know that," Kaim said.

"So put me down now!"

"I don't want to let you die."

Hodlign her against his chest, he looked her in the eye and pleaded with her, "I want you to take bread next autumn again from a new crop of wheat."

She stopped flailing her arms and legs in a vain attempt to get free of his grip. She looked straight back at him as he said, "As long as you have someone to feed your freshly-baked bread to, I want you to keep baking bread year after year."

Old Coto heaved a huge sigh and muttered, smiling, "I knew you were a very strange soldier."

* * *

The battle rages on for several days.

The arrogant, cowardly captain died in the fighting.

The soldier who had told Kaim the story of Grandma Coto also died.

Countless defense troops died,a nd countless enemy troops died.

The village was consumed in the flames of war, and old Coto's field was ravaged under the heels of the military.

Kaim's side managed to stave off the attackers, then followed the retreating enemy to the north.

All that remained in their wake was the empty, devastated village.

* * *

The war ended as spring was giving way to summer.

At the cost of massive casualties, the army repulsed the enemy's invasion.

The village began to recover little by little.

As Grandma Coto had predicted, not one old person who crossed the mountains to the refugee camp came back alive.

* * *

Autumn, and Kaim has come back to the village.

He feels warm in the chest when he looks across the fields and spots old Coto sowing wheat.

So...she's doing it again this year.

And next year, and the year after that, for as long as she is alive.

She notices Kaim, and cross toward him with a welcoming smile. A year has passed. She seems to have shrunk somewhat with a year's worth of aging.

"Haven't seen you for a while," she says, "So--they didn't kill you!"

"And I'm glad to see you looking well, too."

"I heard you stayed near my house during the fight--you single-handedly fought to keep enemy troops away from it!"

Kaim gives her a shy smile. "How was your wheat?" he asks.

"All ruined, of course. Worst crop I've ever had--a few scrawny stalks. Barely enough for one loaf."

She tells him all this with surprising ease.

Then she fixes her eye on him and asks, "Have some?"

"What...?"

"Bread, of course! I'll bake a loaf now if you'll help me eat it."

"Well, sure, but..."

Grandma Coto sees through Kaim's hesitancy and says with a calm smile,

"Yes, he's dead, my grandson. I got word at the end of summer, I was waiting and hoping...planning to bake him a loaf of bread as soon as he got home."

When she sees Kaim hanging his head in silence, she adopts a spirited tone as if _she_ has to be the one to cheer _him_ up,

"Come on, then, you eat what he would have had. It'll probably be tougher than usual, what with the wheat harvest being so bad, but I'm sure my grandson would be happy to know I fed my bread to the man who saved my life."

So, this old woman has lost her entire family to war.

In other words, there is no one left to enjoy her bread.

Still, she urges Kaim to "Wait just a minute while I finish this up," sowing the wheat for next year's harvest.

She does it because that is what she has always done.

Because it is what she is supposed to do.

Kaim stops himself from speaking the words, "Let me help," and he stands staring at old Coto's bent back.

In the glow of the setting autumn sun, she is sadly small and sadly beautiful.

Kaim eats the fresh-baked bread.

Old Coto was right: made from wheat grown without its full measure of care, the bread is hard and dry, and poor in taste.

Still, of all the bread Kaim has eaten--and will go on to eat--in his long, long life, this is by far the most delicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: War does not spare anyone, including civilians. Just search for any war that takes place in a city or country and there will be bound to have civilian casualties.
> 
> Also, give me one war that does not involve with noncombatant and civilian deaths, its name, its year and total deaths. I can wait for your response.


	18. So Long, Friend

Even when he is trying to look detached, his true feelings show through.

He is timid, cowardly, and gentle.

He might try his best to put on a threatening expression, but the smile that comes afterward is indescribably sweet and almost worshipful.

This is why Kaim is always telling him to "Forget it!"

This happens when they are perched on bar stools or earning a day's pay in the quarry, or walking through the marketplace, or standing on the stone-paved road.

"But why, Big Brother?"

Tobal says with a pout. He always calls Kaim "Big Brother," and though Kaim has never asked for his companionship, he takes every opportunity to follow him around. He is "worshipful" in this sense.

"Please take me with you, Big Brother Kaim, when you leave this town!" he begs like a child even though he is old enough to have a regular job.

"Sailing over the ocean, crossing continents, traveling anywhere you like... my heart starts pounding when I imagine that kind of freedom," he says, his eyes shining like a child's.

"I've always wanted to meet a traveler like you, Big Brother. Take me with you, please! I can't stand this hick town anymore."

He would grab Kaim's hand and ding to it like a little boy, and often he would look around at the people on the street or at the crowds in the tavern, openly making boyish faces at them to show Kaim his disgust.

"You come from another town so you know what I'm talking about. The only thing this place has is its history. Sure, it's old, but it's half dead. Look at these people's faces. Not one of them has any spark. All they want is to get through one ordinary day after another without any problems. It's the worst place in the world. If I have to stay cooped up here much longer, I'm going to have moss growing on me."

No spark? Kaim doesn't see it that way. People here behave with the refinement and mild manner appropriate to a historic city know as "The Ancient Capital." They simply have no taste for the kind of ambitions that go with high hopes or danger.

Having never set foot outside this place where he was born and raise, Tobal knows nothing about other towns.

Kaim knows all too much about them: there are those that used to be the left and right banks of a single town separated only by a river but which now clash in hatred in intense and ongoing war; towns in the grip of famine where the residents snatch food from one another; economically flourishing towns rampant with crime driven by greed; towns of rotting houses abandoned by their people in search of wealth and prosperity while, just over the hill, there sparkle boom towns where the people celebrate their riches all night long.

On his endless journey, Kaim has seen towns without number.

And he not only thinks to himself but says to Tobal, "This is a good town."

But praise is the last thing Tobal wants to hear about his home town.

"You must be joking," he says.

"Not at all," says Kaim. "This really is a good town."

"I'm telling you, that can't be true."

"No place is perfect, of course."

"I'm not talking about perfection. You've only been here six months or so. You don't know. I've been stuck in this hick town since the day I was born. You can't know how I feel. I'm bored out of my mind. I'm sick of the place. I can't stand it anymore."

Kaim is not unaware of what Tobal is trying to tell him.

Still--but no, Kaim shakes his head and gives Tobal a sour smile.

"You know," he says, "there are some people in this world who would give anything to get a taste of what it's like to have enough peaceful days to make you bored."

"Well... that may be so..."

"I think you were lucky to have been born in a town like this, where the people are so happy."

When you sleep in an inn in this town, you don't have to keep your ear cocked all night for threatening sounds in the hallway. Young women can walk the streets at night without a dagger for protection. The children have plenty of plain but nourishing food, and they can play outdoors until the sun goes down.

Life on the road teaches you these things. The more towns you see, the more deeply the lesson leaves its mark on you. The kinds of things that Tobal takes for granted are in fact the indispensable keys to happiness.

"I'm not so sure, Big Brother. Isn't happiness making your dreams come true? If all you need to do is to go on living in peace and security, what's the point of living at all?"

Tobal is not just being perverse and arguing for the sake of arguing, Eyes locked on Kaim's, he is asking these questions in all seriousness and sincerity.

Kaim recognizes that Tobal is an absolutely straightforward fellow and that, precisely because he had a comfortable, untroubled upbringing, he has come to feel constrained in the town where he was born.

The irony of it calls forth a twinge of pain in Kaim's breast.

This in turn provokes him to challenge Tobal.

"So tell me: what _is_ your dream?"

"My dream? That's obvious, isn't it? To get the hell out of this place as soon as possible."

"And go where?"

"Anywhere. Anywhere but here."

"And what will you do when you get there?"

"I don't know."

"What if you end up someplace that's not at all what you're expecting?"

"I said I don't know, didn't I? Stop being so hard on me, Big Brother."

"I'm not being hard on you. These are things you have to think about."

"Well, I've had enough! An outsider like you can't possibly know how I feel!"

Though he stalks away in anger, Tobal will be back in the morning, as worshipful as ever of his "Big Brother."

He has the simple, carefree personality of a child.

* * *

Tobal has a wife--the young, still-girlish Angela, whom he has known since childhood.

Angela carries within her the crystallization of their love.

Tobal will soon become a father.

Tobal's parents, relatives, and friends shower their blessings upon the "young couple" who will soon be "young parents."

But Tobal says to Kaim, "I don't want this."

Glowering, he all but spits the words out as the two sit at the far end of the tavern's bar.

"Don't want to be a father?" Kaim asks, which only increases the bitterness of Tobal's expression.

Tobal nods, but as if to negate this answer he mutters, "No, I'm glad enough to have a kid. How could I not be happy about that? But... I don't know... I just don't want this."

He can't quite put it into words, he says. He cocks his head a few times as if to explain himself, and then he swigs down his liquor.

"You don't have a family, do you, Big Brother?"

"No, I don't..."

"What does it feel like--to be all alone in the world?"

Kaim's only answer is a strained smile.

Tobal interprets Kaim's expression and silence to suit himself.

"You're absolutely free, right? Of course you are! No load to bear, no leg irons..."

"You think kids are leg irons?"

"In a word... yes. To tell the truth, Angela is, too. And my parents: when they get old, they'll be another burden. Working every day for Angela and the kid, raising the kid, taking care of my old parents... and my life ends. That's what the birth of a child is: it's like a life sentence. You're stuck."

Kaim does not nod in agreement with this.

Neither does he try to argue against it.

Tobal interprets this silence, too, as he sees fit.

"I know what you're thinking." He frowns. "Shut up, kid, you don't know what you're talking about."

Kaim says nothing.

Tobal, uncomfortable, looks away. "I'm glad," he says, more to himself than to Kaim. "I'm glad to be having a kid with Angela. I'm going to do everything I can for them. It's true, I wouldn't lie to you. You have to believe me, Big Brother. I really am happy, and I know I'm going to have to work hard."

"Yes, I know." says Kaim.

"I'm happy, but at the same time I don't want it. It's not that I'm embarrassed about it or anything. It's just that, I don't know, I want to give up this whole business and run away somewhere... far away..."

"So now the truth comes out," Kaim says with a laugh.

"What do you mean?"

"You just said you want to 'run away,' not to 'travel.'"

This is probably Tobal's true feeling, to which he gives grudging assent.

"I suppose so... how else can I put it?"

Kaim almost wishes he had been a little tougher on Tobal.

How would Tobal answer if he said, for example, "You know, Tobal, you started talking about traveling with me around the time Angela's belly started to swell"?

What would the look on Tobal's face be life if he asked, "If a family is leg irons, why did you even propose to Angela?"

How would Tobal shift his gaze if he confronted him with, "You know, Tobal, if you want to get out of this town so badly, you don't have to travel with _me_. Just take off by yourself"?

But Kaim doesn't have the meanness to ask such questions nor is he ginve to meddling in people's private affairs.

Instead, he drains his cup of its last few drops and says only, "Let's get out of here."

* * *

Even after they have left the tavern, Tobal goes on about the stupidity of living the rest of his life in this town.

The broad night sky is clear. The moon is out, and perfectly round.

"I'm asking you again, Big Brother. When you leave this town, just say the word to me. Wouldn't it be better for you, too, to have a traveling companion?"

Tobal is starting to go in circles again when Kaim interrupts him.

"Didn't you want to get out there all by yourself? Traveling with a companion is not exactly a solo trip."

"No, well, you see, uh, you're right: I'd just go part-way with you. You can let me tag along a little while, and then I'll take off on my own."

"You'd just slow me down."

"I know that. I know that. Traveling is hard, sure, and my life might even be in danger sometimes, I know that. But that's what makes it so thrilling..."

"Risking your life is no game."

"Look, if I turn out to be a drag on you, you can just leave me behind. That's it! I wouldn't mind that. I mean, look, I'm ready to leave my parents and my wife and kid behind."

This is never going to end. Kaim nods and with a sigh says, "All right."

"You'll take me with you?"

Tobal's face lights up.

"I've been in this town too long," says Kaim. "It's about time for me to get out there walking with the wind in my face."

"Yeah, that's it, that's it. Walk with the wind in your face. Life on the road! When do we leave? It's getting pretty late in the year. You don't want to be on the road in the winter, do you? Say, how about after the snow in the pass has melted?"

Kaim points to the moon hanging in the night sky.

"Huh?" Tobal seems puzzled as he looks up.

"The night this moon is perfectly round again after it's waned and waxed."

"Meaning?"

"Exactly one month from tonight."

Tobal's face starts to move as if he wants to say something.

He probably wants to say 'That's too son.' His face betrays a look of hesitation and confusion that was absent when he was engaged in his usual endless chatter.

"A month from now? That's the middle of winter, Big Brother."

"I know that."

"Won't it be hard getting through the pass?"

"You don't want to go?"

"No, that's not it..."

"If you don't like it, you don't have to come with me. I'm leaving the night of the next full moon. That's all there is to it."

"Okay, then, Big Brother. I'll go. I'm definitely in."

The night of the next full moon.

Angela would be having her baby right about then.

* * *

The month slips by.

Toward the beginning, Tobal is excited and whenever they meet he reminds Kaim, "Don't forget your promise, Big Brother."

After the waning moon has disappeared from the sky, however, he begins to grow more reserved.

The vanished moon reappears in the sky, and as it waxes little by little, Tobal stops trailing after Kaim. Sometimes he goes so far as to slip away through the crowd when he sees Kaim approaching in the marketplace.

Kaim notices Tobal's change in attitude. It is something he expected to happen and was even counting on.

Hands upon her swollen belly, Angela wears a smile of deep serenity as she shops at the market.

Not just Tobal but everyone who encounters that smile of hers must surely come to realize this; the dreams of the young, to be sure, involve doing what you want to do, but that is not the only kind of dream there is.

When people grow up, they see that there is another kind of dream, and that is to wish for the smile of the one you love and who loves you in return: to long for it always and forever.

That is another kind of dream that people come to understand when they grow up.

* * *

The moon is full again.

In its perfect roundness, the moon floods the empty stone-paved road with brilliant light.

Tobal comes running, out of breath, to the empty room where Kaim has completed his preparations for travel.

Tobal is carrying nothing. He has not even changed out of his everyday clothing.

"Big Brother, I'm so sorry!" he pants, gasping for breath.

He ducks his head repeatedly before Kiam in apology.

"You changed your mind?" Kaim asks, trying not to smile.

"No, not at all. I'm going to go. I'm planning to go with you, Big Brother. Only..."

Angela went into labor as the sun was going down, he says. They called the town's most skilled and experienced midwife, but Tobal still hasn't heard the baby cry. The birth is taking much longer than it should.

"Angela is giving it everything she's got.

My mother and father are praying for all they're worth. So at least until the baby's safely born, I want to stay with Angela. She says it calms her down to hold my hand, so, well, I really can't leave her now..."

Kaim nods to him with full understanding.

"So please, Big Brother, wait just a little longer. As soon as I've seen the baby born, I'll leave home, I swear, I'll definitely go, so just a little longer..."

Even as he speaks, his feet are stamping impatiently on the ground with his eagerness to rush back home.

"I understand," says Kaim. "I'll wait until the moon is directly overhead in the night sky."

"Don't worry, it won't take that long. You'll just have to wait a little while, just a very short while."

"No hurry. Nut on the other hand, I want you to promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"When the baby is born, I want you to hold it in your arms. Don't come back here until you've held the baby. Understood?"

Tobal looks at him with a puzzled expression, but he nods in agreement and says, "Understood. I will do exactly that, Big Brother. So be sure to wait for me!" Tobal charges out of the room with even greater force than when he came in.

The sound of his footsteps running on the stone pavement draws away, and when Kaim is sure he is gone, a smile slowly spreads across his face.

* * *

Tobal never comes back.

As the moon reaches its zenith and begins to dip toward the west, signs of light appear in the eastern sky, Kaim approaches the mountain pass on the edge of the town.

He will be traveling alone.

Heading up to the pass, he walks swiftly as if to shake off the sound of Tobal's voice remaining in his ears:

Big Brother Kaim! I'm sorry, Big Brother, I'm sorry...

He can imagine the voice all too clearly and Tobal bowing his head in abject apology. There is no need for him to hear the actual voice.

Long after he has left the town, he will continue to see Tobal's worshipful smile in the eye of his mind. Tobal would not have provided much support as a traveling companion, but a journey together would likely have given them both much to laugh about.

But never mind. This is just fine, Kaim tells himself and ups his pace even more.

He is not the least bit resentful or angry at Tobal for having broken his promise. Quite the contrary, he would like to bless Tobal for having chosen to stay in his native place and protect his home.

All the more so because this is a dream that can never come true for Kaim himself.

A frigid wind tears through the pre-dawn pass.

If the cries of a newborn baby could ride on that wind to be heard up here...

Kaim chuckles at the though.

Will Tobal abandon his dream to leave his home town? Or will he start looking for another "Big Brother" who will help conceal his fear of going on the road alone?

Kaim has no way to tell. Best to leave it unresolved.

Tobal could not take to the road the night his child was born. The hands with which he held his newborn baby were useless for travel preparations.

If only for that reason, he took one step toward becoming a grown-up.

"Let's go," Kaim mutters to himself as he crosses over the pass.

_Look, Angela, he's smiling..._

The happy smile that Tobal fixes on his baby will be travel companion enough for Kaim until he reaches the next town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: During the Middle Ages, land travel took place by foot, by horse or by cart and carriage. Although it is fantasized that traveling around the Middle Ages would be exciting, traveling around is actually limited, and the scope is only with travels to market for supplies.


	19. The Tragedy of the Butcher General

Everyone knows this general as "The Butcher."

He is strong in battle, a skilled tactician, he has mastered the techniques of turning the specifics of topography and timing to his advantage, and he is outstanding, above all, in the skills of an individual warrior.

Victory on the battlefield, however, does not lead straight to butchery.

May generals have been nicknamed for their military prowess--

the Victorious, the Indomitable, the Invincible--  
but only one is known as the Butcher.

"Do you know why that is, Kaim?" the general himself asks as he gloats over the vast mountain of corpses.

Kaim does not reply. He entered the fray as a mercenary, but his exploits far outclassed those of the regular troops. For the general to call a man into his presence and speak to him face-to-face is apparently an honor beyond even most officers' wildest dreams.

"Not just from winning battles," the general goes on. "That would be too simple: just kill the enemy general. Take the big one's head and the battle's over. Right?"

Kaim nods in silence. That is how this battle should have ended instead of continuing for three days. The enemy general proposed a surrender on the first day. He offered his head in exchange for the lives of his men and the villagers. But the Butcher rejected the offer and continued his all-out attack on an enemy that had lost the will to fight, annihilating them in the process. The last day was used to burn down the forest into which the unresisting villagers had fled.

"The real battle doesn't end when you raise the victory song on the battlefield. If even one person survives, the seed of hatred lives on. I'm talking about the desire for revenge. Nothing good can come from leaving that behind. You must cut the cause of future troubles at the root."

This is why the troops under the general's command killed the young men of the village after they were through exterminating the enemy troops. They also killed the unarmed old people. They killed mothers fleeing with children in their arms. They killed the children they stripped from those mothers' corpses.

"Do you think me cruel, Kaim?"

"I do," Kaim answered, nodding.

The officers gathered around them went pale, but the Butcher himself smiled magnanimously and went on.

"You didn't do any of those things, I gather."

"My job is to kill soldiers on the battlefield. My contract doesn't call for anything else."

"And I'm saying that that is a foolish line of thinking. The soldiers you killed have brothers and children. Do you plan to go on living in fear of their revenge? That is sheer stupidity. If you wipe out the entire family, you can live without such worries, you see."

The general laughs uproariously, and the surrounding officers all smile in response.

Kaim, however, his expression unchanged, starts to walk away.

"Where are you going, Kaim?"

"We are through talking, aren't we? My contract has ended."

"Never mind that. Just wait."

When the general says this, several soldiers stand to block Kaim's way.

"Listen, Kaim. I've had reports of your performance from the front lines. What do you say to fighting under me from now on? You can exploit your martial talents to the full."

"I am not interested."

"What's that?"

"I will never draw my sword on an unarmed opponent."

The Butcher is momentarily taken back, the shock written clearly on his face.

"You still don't understand, do you? You should try reading a little history. You'll find that hatred only breeds more hatred. This is what inevitably brings down even the most prosperous nations and powers, which is why I make absolutely sure to sever it at the root."

"If you ask me, general, war and butchery are two different things."

"What are you--"

"The same goes for valor and brutality."

"You, a lowly mercenary, dare to lecture me...?"

"Let me tell you something about hatred, too, general. It doesn't evaporate from cutting off a life. It remains--in the earth, in the clouds, in the wind. I have lived my life in that belief, and I intend to go on doing so."

"You stupid--"

"Butchery is the work of cowards. That is what I believe."

"Where do you get the nerve...?"

The general glares at Kaim, and his men draw their swords.

At that very moment, from within the scorched forest come the cries of soldiers.

"Here are some! Five of them still left!" "No, six!" "Over there! They went that way!"

Distracted by the shouts, the general commands his men.

"Hurry, capture them! Don't let even one of them get away! Hurry! Hurry! You can't let them escape!"

The men blocking Kaim begin to fidget, and none of them thinks to stop him as he calmly walks away.

"Do you hear me? You must not let them escape! If even one of them gets away, I'll have your heads--all of you!"

The general's calls are clearly those of a coward.

* * *

The Butcher presided over many battles after that, and he burned countless villages to the ground, butchering all of their inhabitants.

Then, one night, something happened.

The general felt a strange itching sensation on the back of his hand.

It was different from an ordinary insect bite or skin eruption. It was deeper down and felt like a kind of squirming.

"This is odd..."

He clawed at his skin, but the itch would not subside. It was very strange: there was no redness or swelling or sign of a rash.

"Maybe I touched a poisonous moth..."

The general had burnt yet another village to the ground that day. Surrounded by beautiful countryside, the village in times of peace had been extolled as the "Flowering Hamlet." In keeping with the name, the villagers poured their energies into cultivating flowers of many hues, and the ones in full bloom in this particular season had the color of the setting sun.

Indeed, the entire village looked as if it had been dyed the color of the beautiful afterglow. This was the village that the general burned down with flames far redder than any sunset. The villagers, who ran in circles begging for their lives, he killed one at a time. Far redder than the sunset, far redder than the flames was the blood that soaked into the earth.

* * *

"But this is how it always is. I didn't do anything special today."

Shaking the hand that refused to stop itching, the general took a swallow of liquor.

And in that moment it happened.

Tearing through the thin skin of the back of his hand, a number of small grain-like things emerged from within.

No blood flowed.

No pain accompanied them.

Exactly the way plants sprout from the earth.

No, the things that covered over the back of his hand before his very eyes were, unmistakably, plant sprouts.

Horrified, the general took a razor to the back of his hand and tried to shave the things off.

When the blade came in contact with them, however, they gave off sounds like human moans--sounds exactly like the moans of a human being dying in agony as his entire body is slashed by swords.

Or like the moans of a person who is being burned alive.

"Shut you, damn you! Shut up, you hellish--"

Holding the razor in one hand to shave the other, he could not cover his ears.

His body was soaked in a greasy sweat by the time he succeeded in shaving the horrible things from the back of his hand. To salve his own anger, he shouted for the men who were supposed to be guarding him.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Sir?"

"You should have come running when you heard unusual voices coming from my tent! That is you job as guards!"

The guards gave each other puzzled looks, and the first replied hesitantly to the general.

"Forgive me, Sir, we were standing just outside the entrance, but we never heard any such..."

The general glared at his guards, enraged, but after struggling to keep his welling anger in check, he shouted. "Never mind, then. Get out!"

He was too upset to waste time on subordinates.

Almost immediately, the itching attacked the back of his hand again.

But this time it was not limited to his hand: his flanks, his shoulders, his buttocks, behind his knees, his whole body started to itch.

Alone again, the general tore of his nightclothes and inspected his entire body in the moonlight seeping through the roof of the tent.

The things were sprouting from everywhere now, and some even had leaves beginning to grow on them.

The general raised a soundless scream and began wildly attacking the growths wherever he could reach them.

Each one he cut from his body released a horrible moan--horrible, horrible, horrible...

His bed sheets turned green before his eyes, and soon the numberless sprouts were transformed into numberless human corpses. They covered not only his bed, but the whole earth, before they melted into the darkness of night and vanished.

* * *

One sleepless night followed another in endless succession.

The horrible things kept sprouting from his skin however much he cut them off. Ointments had no effect. He tried taking every poison-quelling tablet he could get his hands on, but nothing worked.

He could not speak of this to his subordinates.

If a rumor spread that strange plants were sprouting from the Butcher's body, it would embolden his enemies and discourage his allies. One of his subordinates might even try to take his head at night.

His cowardice had earned him the name of the Butcher, and that same cowardice was what turned the general into a lonely, isolated man.

He had no one he could tell about this.

Each night the general would wage his lonely battle--though perhaps it could not be called a battle precisely. The things merely sprouted from his body and put up no resistance. When he took the razor to them, they would simply moan and fall away. What the general was engaged in on his own was less a battle than lonely butchery.

* * *

Several more nights went by.

The sprouting continued with undiminished force. The single fortunate aspect, perhaps, was that the things only sprouted in places on his body where the general could reach with his razor. This could as well have been a curse, however. The general had no choice but to go on shaving the things precisely because he could reach them.

Precisely because he was able to perform the butchery by himself, he could not call for help.

His lonely butchery continued.

His sleepless nights continued.

The general's flesh wasted away.

 _Why is this happening?_ the general asked himself. _Why did this have to happen to me?_

This is a time of war. I am here on the battlefield. I have to kill the enemy in order to survive. In order to give myself future peace of mind. I have to kill them all, both armed and unarmed.

"It is simple common sense," the general all but spit out the words. "All I have done is the sensible thing in the most sensible way."

This night again the sprouts emerged from his body.

This night again the general had to shave them off.

Again the countless moans.

Again the countless bodies.

Again he heard the cock crow to announce the end of night.

Again the general passed the night without the comfort of sleep.

The general's body, once superbly conditioned on the battlefield, withered away before his own eyes. But more than his body, his mind became unstable.

He spent his days sprawled on his bed.

Eyes open or closed, he would see images of his past scenes of butchery.

Now he began to recall the words of a skilled but insolent mercenary.

Hatred doesn't evaporate from cutting off a life.

It remains--in the earth, in the clouds, in the wind.

The general wanted to see that man again--to see him and ask him again, "Have I been wrong all these years?"

The man himself, a man of few words, would probably not answer his question. Still, the general wanted to see him again, that mercenary, that Kaim fellow.

The sun went down. The night gradually deepened.

As always, the itching started and the plants began to sprout.

But the general, grasping the razor in fingers that now looked like withered branches, no longer had the strength to shave them off.

His back began to itch.

This was the first time the things had sprouted someplace beyond his reach--as if they had been waiting for this opportune moment.

Sprawled on his bed, the general let the razor drop from his hand.

_Enough._

_I don't care anymore._

The sprouts kept growing, creeping over him, and before long they had covered him completely.

At that point his back split open and an unusually large sprout emerged.

By dawn the sprout had fully matured, and before the cock crowed, it produced a single blossom the color of an evening afterglow.

* * *

Many long years have passed.

Visiting the old battlefield, Kaim finds a flower garden there.

Blooming in profusion are flowers of clearly different shape and color than the ones along its border.

Beside the garden stands a stone monument inscribed with the garden's history:

_In this place, a great general met his end. He was known as_  
_the Butcher. He died suddenly one night, and from his body_  
_grew many flowering plants. These were Evening Flowers, a_  
_blossom unique to a village the general had burnt to the ground._  
_An ancient legend tells us that the seeds of the Evening Flower_  
_lodge in the bodies of those who nourish hatred in their breasts_  
_and the roots of the plant feed the flowers with the person's flesh._

The garden's flowers, the color of the setting sun, sway in a gentle breeze.

Kaim stands there for a time, gazing at the countless flowers given birth by hatred, before walking on in silence.

It is said that in the very center of the garden lies a disintegrating suit of armor, but no one has ever found it...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yes, plants can grow within the human body. But this is very, very rare and happens once in a blue moon. Recently in the past, an old man has a pea sprout growing in his lung due to accidentally inhaling the pea. The story is just impossible to replicate in real life, but then it sets in Lost Odyssey where magic exist, so there's that.
> 
> Come to think of it, this story might have set place in the earliest part of the magical revolution.


	20. The Story of Old Man Greo

Old Man Greo was known as the best shoemaker in the country.

His shoes were light as a feather and tough as steel. They were also expensive--three times higher than anything else on the market. People who did not know his reputation were so shocked to hear what he charged that they would say,

"The old man must be making shoes for his own amusement!"

Of course, this was not the case. He had become a craftsman's apprentice at a tender age, and whenever he learned one master's skills he would move on to more talented shoemakers. Before he knew it, he found himself making shoes for the grandchildren of his earliest customers.

Greo was such a skilled craftsman, he could make any kind of shoe the customer ordered, but he was best at, and most enjoyed making, thick-soled traveling shoes.

All his customers agreed, "Once you've traveled in Old Man Greo's shoes, you can't wear anybody else's."

Some would say, "You know what it's like to wear his shoes? You don't get tired the same way. You just want to keep walking--as long and as far as you can. You almost hate to get where you're going."

True craftsman that he was, though, Old Man Greo rarely talked to his customers, and he could be downright unfriendly. Complimented on his work, he wouldn't so much as smile. Instead, he would put another piece of tanned leather on his wooden shoe last and start hammering away.

The only time the old fellow would crack even the slightest smile was when a customer visited his workshop to place an order.

Not that he was ever thrilled to get an order. What he most enjoyed was when a customer brought him a pair of shoes that had outlived its usefulness. He would stare lovingly at the worn-down soles and the disintegrating uppers, and he would actually talk to them!

"You've done some good traveling, I see..."

His regular customers would never dispose of their old shoes themselves because they knew how much he enjoyed this. Neither would they do anything so foolish as to clean the shoes before handing them over to the old man. He wanted them straight from the road-covered with dirt, oil-stained, and stinking of sweat.

"These fellows are my stand-ins." he would say, choosing an honored place for them in his storehouse.

"They take my place on the road, you know. They've done their job, I hate to throw them away just because they've no good anymore."

Proud craftsman though he was, Old Man Greo never wore his own shoes.

He couldn't have worn them even if he had wanted to.

His legs were gone from the knees down.

A terrible illness had attacked his bones when he was very young, and the legs had been amputated to save his life.

The old man had lived his long life in a wheelchair. He had never once left his native village.

This was what he meant when he said that his shoes did his traveling for him.

"Haven't seen you for a while."

Old Man Greo says without looking up from his work as Kaim steps across the threshold. His back is toward the door, but he can tell from the sound of the footsteps when a regular customer has entered his shop.

"You crossed the desert?"

The sound tells him how worn down the shoes are, and where they have been. Old Man Greo is a craftsman of the first order.

"It was a terrible trip."

Kaim says with a grim smile, settling on a chair in the corner of the shop. When old Greo is in the final stages of shoemaking, almost nothing can make him stop work, as all his regular customers know.

"Were my shoes any good on this one?"

"They were great! I couldn't have done it with anyone else's."

"That's good."

The old man doesn't sound the least bit pleased, which is to be expected.

Greo is especially curt when he is working. If Kaim wants to see the old man smile, he will have to wait a little until he hands Greo his old shoes during a work break.

"Here to order new ones?"

"Uh-huh."

"Where to this time?"

"Up north, most likely."

"Ocean? Mountains?"

"Probably walking along the shore."

"To fight?"

"Probably."

Old Man Greo signals his understanding with a quick nod. He says nothing for a while.

The only sound in the workshop comes from Greo's wooden mallet.

Kaim is moved to hear it. _Like old times_.

He has ordered any number of shoes here. Even before the old man took over the shop.

Kaim is one of Old Man Greo's oldest customers. In other words, he is one of the few who have survived repeated journeys.

Swinging his mallet and speaking in short snatches, the old man tells Kaim about the deaths of some of his regular customers. Some fell ill and died on the road. Others lost their lives in accidents. And not a few were killed in battle...

"It's hard when only the shoes come back."

Kaim nods in silence.

"One young fellow died a few weeks ago. He was wearing the first pair of shoes I ever made for him. The soles were hardly worn at all."

"Tell me about him."

"You know, you hear it all the time. Leaves his home town, wants to live someplace exciting, parents try to stop him but he goes anyway."

"I'm surprised he could afford shoes from you."

"The parents bought them. Sad, isn't it? They give their boy all this love and care, and he's barely out of childhood when he says he's going to leave home. They finally give up and decide to let him go. They figure they can at least give him a pair of my shoes as a going-away present. Less than a month later he comes back a corpse. I don't know, parents nowadays, they spoil their kids rotten. It's so damned stupid." Greo snarls.

Kaim knows that the old man's feelings go deeper than that. Old Man Greo is the kind of craftsman who would rush to make new shoes for the funeral of a sad young man who had breathed his last while his dream was only half-finished. He would put them on the young man's feet in the coffin and pray that he would be able to go all the way on this final journey.

Greo falls silent again and wields his mallet.

Kaim notices how bent and shriveled the old man has become.

He has known him a long, long time. Those days will be ending soon enough, Kaim thinks with an ache in his chest.

Old Greo finally reaches a point in his work where he can turn and face his customer.

"It's good to have you back, Kaim."

His face is covered with wrinkles. Kaim realizes anew how old he has become.

"Where did you say you were traveling?"

"The desert."

"Right, I think you told me that before."

Kaim shakes his head. The old man seems to lose his powers of concentration when he isn't working, and his memory is shaky sometimes.

Little by little--but unmistakably--old Greo is spending more and more time drifting in the space between dream and reality. People grow old and die. The truth of this all-too-obvious destiny strikes Kaim with special force whenever he completes a long journey.

"So, you survived this one, too, I see."

Kaim looks at him with a strained smile.

"Have you forgotten? I can't die."

"Oh, I guess I knew that..."

"And I never get old. I look just like I did the first time you met me, don't I?"

The old man looks momentarily stunned. "Oh, I guess I knew that, too..." he says, nodding uncertainly.

"Sure, you were a kid then. You had just had that sickness and lost your legs and were crying all day long."

"That's right... I remember..."

"You used to call me Big Brother Kaim and play with my old shoes. Do you remember?"

"Yes, of course."

Greo speaks with certainty now. Either the fog has cleared or the distant memory has come back with special clarity because it comes from so long ago.

"The soles were worn down, there were holes here and there, and they had a sour stink of mud and sweat.

To other people, they must have looked like plain old shoes ready for the garbage, but to me they were a treasure.

I remember running my finger through the coat of road dust that covered them and trying to imagine where they had been. I enjoyed them so much! I really enjoyed them!"

Kaim's shoes were what got old Greo started as a shoemaker.

"It was all thanks to you, Kaim. If I hadn't met you, I would have spent my life cursing my fate. Instead, I've been happy. I'm happy now. Even if I can't leave this workshop, my sons can travel for me. I've had a happy life."

He pauses. "Well, now, will you listen to me talking up a storm!" Greo says with an embarrassed smile. He extends a thick hand to Kaim.

"All right, now, give me my sons," he says, and Kaim hands him the worn-out old shoes he has brought with him.

The old man strokes them fondly and says with a sigh, "You've been through many a battle."

"I was a mercenary, too, for a time."

"I know that," says Greo. "I can smell the blood. All the shoes that travel with you are like this."

"Are you angry?"

"Not at all. I'm just glad you came back from this latest trip in one piece."

"I'll be leaving again as soon as you make me new ones."

"Another one of those trips? To war?"

"Uh-huh..."

"And when that journey ends, you'll leave on another one?"

"Probably..."

"How long can you keep it up?"

Kaim's only answer is a grim smile. _Forever_. This is not a word to speak lightly in the presence of someone who has lived what little time he has to the fullest.

"Oh, well, never mind," the old man says, turning his back on Kaim to continue his work.

"Wait three days. You can leave the morning of the fourth day."

"That will be fine."

"When will we meet next after that?"

"Two years, maybe. Three? It could be a little longer."

"Really? Well, then, this could be the last pair of shoes I ever make for you."

Kaim believes it will be. The old man is not likely to last three more years. Kaim fervently wishes it were not so, but wishing by itself can do nothing.

Only those who possess eternal life know that this is precisely why the time a person lives is so irreplaceably precious.

"Say, Kaim..."

"What's that?"

"Mind if I make a second pair of shoes out of the same piece of leather to match your new ones?"

They will be for himself, he explains, to be placed in his coffin for his life's final journey.

"I'd like that," answers Kaim. The old man swings his mallet instead of thanking him. The sound is far sadder and lonelier than usual.

"Come to think of it, though, Kaim, be sure to come back to this town even after I'm dead. Offer up your old shoes at my grave."

"I will."

"I'd like to say I'll be going to heaven a step ahead of you and waiting for you there, but in your case it doesn't work."

"No, unfortunately."

"What's it like, an endless journey? Happy? Unhappy?"

"Probably unhappy," Kaim replies, but his voice is drowned out in the rising sound of Greo's mallet until it is lost even to his own ears.

* * *

Old Man Greo reached the end of his full span of years soon after Kaim's visit to his shop.

Because Greo had no family, his grave in the cemetery at the edge of town was cared for by his many songs. In accordance with his wishes, his regular customers offered up their old shoes at his grave.

Kaim's shoes were among them.

The works inscribed on his gravestone were chosen by Greo himself.

He explained his choice to Kaim this way: "I would say the words to each new pair of shoes before I handed them to the customer. I always said them to the customer, too. I never once had the experience, though, of hearing someone say the words to me.

That's why I want them on my gravestone.

These are the words I want to be seen off with on my journey to heaven."

* * *

Several decades flow by.

Not only Old Man Greo but all the customers who knew him have long since departed the world.

The only one who still comes to pay his respects is Kaim.

He no longer wears shoes that were crafted by the old man. Like the life of man, the life of a pair of shoes cannot be eternal.

Still, Kaim comes to the town at the beginning of every journey, touching his forehead to the ground at the old man's grave.

The gravestone is covered with moss, but the words engraved on it, strangely enough, are still clearly legible.

"May your journey be a good one!"

These were the words the old man always spoke.

Coming from his mouth they could be brusque, but they were always charged with feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Shoe making is, yes, done previously by hand before. Reason I put this is because people tend to forget that shoes were made entirely by people in the old times and just think of shoes as popping out of the store as if it exist there.


	21. Seth's Dream Part 2

I know you probably hate me now, Aneira.

Or perhaps, as the descendant of the noble white-winged clan, you harbor no such vulgar emotions as hatred.

Kind and gentle as you are, perhaps you have forgiven me. Perhaps you have accepted what I did, and now you pity me for being trapped in the prison of solitude again.

But still, good, kind Aneira, I insist on making one last, selfish, request:

Please hate me.

Please hate me for eternity.

If I know that you hate me, I can remain connected to you.

If I know that you have not forgiven me, the pain of that will enable me to feel you close to me.

Are you laughing at my convoluted reasoning?

Then let me say it more simply.

I am lonely.

I fear eternal solitude.

That fear has been with me ever since I killed you with my own two hands...

Nine hundred years have passed since we first met.

In the conventional way, I took a husband. Even more conventionally, I gave birth to a son.

Soon after naming the baby "Sed," my husband died in an epidemic. At his bedside, of course, I cursed the fate that would not let me die.

Had you not been with me, Aneira, I would never have been able to find the strength to raise Sed by myself.

You said to me, "There is no greater joy than for a child to be born and to grow up healthy."

Fitting words from you, sole survivor of the white-winged clan!

You also said to me, "You will be all right Seth. You are no longer alone. Now you have Sed. You will never be alone as long as he is with you."

I nodded to you in tearful recognition of the truth of your words, and you went on with some embarrassment:

"Leave Sed to me. I will train him to be a full-fledged man of the sea. If anyone should dare to threaten him, I will protect him with my life."

How kind you were, Aneira!

How truly kind!

Even now I call recall the carefree smile on your face when you were playing with Sed.

He was such a frail little boy, but you steeled your heart to train him sternly, and on those days when he had cried himself to sleep, I often caught you in profile, watching him in sleep, your face suffused with ineffable gentleness.

How glad I am, Aneira, that fate brought us together!

In my long, long, endlessly long life, I can declare without hesitation that you were my finest companion.

So why, Aneira, did events play out the way they did?

To this day, I have no idea why.

Do you?

Did you know why those things were happening to you?

This is what I would like to know.

All the more so because I can no longer learn the answer, I desperately want to know it.

* * *

It happened thirty years ago.

I said goodbye to you and Sed, and made my way to the Tower of Mirrors.

For the memory had come back to me: the mission on which I had come to this world; the task I had been sent here to accomplish; and the reason I possessed memories of a thousand years spent in this world.

I was a pirate who prized freedom above all. And what I enjoyed most of all was living wildly on the open sea. Exactly why I was so drawn to freedom, I myself did not know.

But that was when I learned: deep in the heart of one who desires freedom lies the pain of freedom denied.

It was you, Aneira, who first taught me the expression "prison of solitude."

And it was true: I was trapped in a prison of solitude.

Not simply, however, because I was confined in a cave on a desert island. For me, being in this world was itself a prison of solitude.

When I came to realize this, I headed for the Tower of Mirrors--in order to return to the world I had come from.

Nourished by my thousand years of memories--memories of having lived in this world--I would return to the world where I belonged.

In the Tower of Mirrors, he was waiting--Gongora, the man with whom I was supposed to return to my original world.

I had no way of knowing, however, that this was a trap that Gongora had set for me.

I can never forget how he stood there, spread-legged and defiant, before the Tower of Mirrors, laughing that arrogant laugh of his. My stomach turns when I recall his hateful face, and my flesh creeps when I think of his cunning, fearsome trap.

Gongora had no intention of returning to our former world. Instead, he hatched a fiendish plot to make himself ruler of this world, and anyone who resisted him, he crushed without mercy.

I was one of those who stood in his way.

As soon as I learned of his evil design, I flew back to my pirate ship.

Of course, such a monster could not be satisfied with merely waiting for me there.

Knowing him--

I felt a terrible foreboding.

"Sed! Aneira!" I screamed as I leaped into the ship.

in the next second, I saw with a gasp that my foreboding had been correct.

Both Sed and you were there, Aneira, on the deck.

Sed lay bleeding.

And you--

When you became aware of me and slowly turned in my direction, you had a strange gleam in your eye.

And there was something in your mouth.

It was Sed's leg. You had ripped it from his body.

All sound faded.

Sed lay there in a sea of blood, his leg torn off, trying to cry out to me.

I couldn't hear a thing.

I could read in his sorrow-filled eyes, however, his plea: "Don't blame Aneira! It's not his fault!"

I'm sure I must have said something,

"What happened?" or perhaps "How did this happen?" or "Calm down, Aneira," or "Be strong, Sed."

But then again, I may have simply screamed, too rattled to produce coherent words.

In any case, I could not hear my own voice.

You were glaring at me, Aneira. Your eyes shone horribly.

You were no longer the Aneira I knew. You had been possessed by some wholly other being.

Why, Aneira, why?

You spit out Sed's leg and let it drop onto the deck.

And then you came after me.

Sed's voice broke the silence when he shouted, "Stop!"

Was he screaming at you, Aneira, or at me to stop?

The whole scene became enveloped in a white light.

When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the deck.

As I slowly opened my eyes and raised myself, I realized that my sword was gone. I had only an empty scabbard at my waist.

I looked around with a shock, and there you were, Aneira, lying on your back.

My sword had been plunged into your chest and stood there like a grave marker.

"Aneira!" I screamed and ran over to you.

I started shaking you, but your eyes were shut tight, and there was no sign they would ever open again.

I shouted at you to wake, to come back to me.

Then I shouted to Sed, "Hurry, Sed! Come here. Aneira is--"

But there was no reply from Sed. Having lost so much blood, he was unconscious.

If only you had been merely unconscious, Aneira!

If only you had been badly wounded but alive!

If only you could have started breathing again!

But my sword had done its job to horrifying perfection. It had pierced your chest exactly where it needed to in order to take your life.

I stared at your corpse uncomprehendingly.

O, Aneira, lone survivor of the proud white-winged clan!

Tell me--please tell me--what happened?

Was I the one who killed you?

I sensed someone approaching from behind

I turned to find Gongora staring at me, expressionless.

"You killed him," he said softly, his voice devoid of emotion.

I shook my head, wincing.

"No..."

My voice was hoarse, trembling...

Gongora went on, as if slowly pressing his words into my ears.

"It was you. You killed him."

"No! I would never do such a thing!"

The trembling of my voice spread to my entire body. To think that I might have killed you, Aneira, with my own hands--that could never be! This was what I wanted to believe, but the reality before me was shattering such hopes.

Gongora threw back his head in contemptuous laughter, all but proclaiming his victory over me.

"You see now, Seth, what you have done--killed the one you most loved. You are on your way back to the prison of solitude!"

Again he laughed aloud.

And he was still laughing as he left the dock, this man who, knowing I could never die, set a trap for me that was crueler than death itself.

I collapsed where I stood.

Looking up at the sky, I felt the tears pouring down my face--tears of blood.

* * *

Again I was plunged into eternal solitude, never to be released from it by death.

Gongora succeeded in locking my heart in darkness again, sealing in my memories with it.

I wept uncontrollably.

I screamed until it all but ripped my throat to shreds.

If my heart--my mind and soul--were something lodged inside my chest, I would have torn it out.

Help me, Aneira! Help me!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: If Seth deliberately tries to forget of this event, then it is understandable. It is called "Dissociative Amnesia" and it involves forgetting significant events in memory because it is very stressful or traumatic.
> 
> No wonder why, when I look back at the cast, our main characters are very broken. We have a mercenary who is depressed over his life; an ex-pirate with dissociative amnesia; a mage with drinking problems, love for women and conflicting loyalties; a queen who is an extreme doormat and also having magically induced amnesia; two kids who lost their mother; the son of the ex-pirate who may also have dissociative amnesia (at least he has a good replacement leg in the game); and a sheltered aristocrat who is also an extreme doormat, a puppet king and with inferiority complex all in one.
> 
> Man, what a cast. But I think Sed might be the most "normal" out of the rest, by the standards of the group anyway.


	22. Bright Rain

"The bright rain is going to start soon," the boy says, pointing out to sea.

"The bright rain?" Kaim asks him.

"Uh-huh. It happens every night, way out there." he says with a carefree smile.

"It's sooo pretty!"

"Bright rain, huh?"

"Yeah. I want you to watch it with me tonight. It's really pretty."

The boy has never once left the island in the ten years since his birth.

The island is small and poor, and the only ways to make a living there are fishing from dugout boats and gathering forest fruits. One monotonous day follows another, the islanders waking at dawn and sleeping beneath the star-filled sky. The boy does not yet realize that this is the greatest happiness of all.

The boy begins speaking to Kaim, who turns to look in his direction.

Hunkered down on the beach in the moonlight, the boy in profile glows like a chocolate sculpture.

"Over there, where the bright rain falls, is a great, big island, right? I know all about it. That island is way bigger than this one and way more stuff goes on there and it's just _full_ of shiny things and pretty things and food that's way better than I can even imagine, right? Don't worry, I know all about it."

Kaim says nothing but gives the boy a pained smile.

Beyond the horizon lies a big island, indeed--a vast continent. Kaim was there until four days ago. Then, rocked in the hold of a freighter for three days and nights, he crossed the sea to this island.

"I know about it, but I've never seen it," the boy says, his voice dropping.

He hangs his head, diverting the moonlight from his face. HIs chocolate skin melts into the darkness.

"Would you like to go there?" Kaim asks.

"Sure I would," the boy replies without hesitation. "All the kids here want to."

"Everybody leaves the island, I suppose."

"Sure they do! Boys and girls both. As soon as they're old enough to work, they go to the 'other country.' Me, too, in another five years... I'll be ready in three years. Then I'll take the boat that you came here on and go to the other country and work hard and eat tons of yummy things."

The boy raises his face again.

Locked on the ocean, his eyes are shining.

They are eyes full of hopes and dreams.

But he knows nothing of the 'other country.' He can never know a thing about it as long as he stays here.

Not one of the young people who crossed the sea, their eyes shining like the boy's with hopes and dreams, ever came back.

Of course not," the boy would say. "The other country is so much more fun, there's no point in coming back!"

The boy believes in the happiness awaiting him in the other country, about which he knows nothing.

Only when they leave the island do the brown-skinned people here learn that their skin is a different color from that of the people in the other country.

That the language of the island is of no use in the other country.

That the people of the other country look on the islanders with cold eyes.

That the only way for them to meet people with the same brown skin, the same language, and the same birthplace is to head for the island people's ghetto in town.

The first words the boy was certain to learn in the other country's language would be the ones the people of the other country used for people like him: illegal alien.

By the time he learned it, he would be tumbling down the hill into the ghetto.

* * *

The boy gallops away from the beach and returns a few minutes later with an overflowing armload of fruit. He says they grow where the wind from the ocean meets the wind from the mountains.

"They're at their best on nights when the moon is full. Go ahead--have a taste."

He wipes a piece of fruit against his worn-out shirt and hands it to Kaim.

"What do you call this?" Kaim asks.

"You're going to laugh, they pinned such a fancy name on it: 'Grain of Happiness'."

"That's a nice name."

Kaim bites into a Grain of Happiness. It is shaped like an apple from the other country, but it is some two sizes smaller and just that much more packed with juicy sweetness.

"This is great," Kaim says.

"You really like it? I'm glad," the boy says with a smile, but he is soon hanging his head again and sighing.

"I like them a lot, too," the boy says, "but I bet the other country has all kinds of stuff that's way better than this, right?"

Kaim does not answer him but takes another bite of a Grain of Happiness.

The boy is right: there are lots of foods in the other country far more delicious than these Grains of Happiness.

Or, more precisely, there _were_.

Now, however, the other country has been transformed into a battlefield.

The war started six months ago.

That was when the boy began seeing the 'bright rain' every night.

The prosperity of the "other country" is extreme. The most glittering happiness is available there to anyone with enough money, and money is available there without restriction to anyone with enough power.

Might makes right.

Wealth is goodness.

Those who are neither mighty nor wealthy obtain right and goodness by finding others who are both weaker and poorer than themselves and ridiculing, despising, and persecuting them.

The island people, whose language and skin color are different from those in the other country, are seen as the other country's shadow.

This is not a shadow, however, that forms because there is light.

The very existence of the shadow is what makes the light all the brighter.

This is the only way that the inhabitants of the other country know how to think about things.

Eventually, however, strength reaches a saturation point, wealth that has run its course begins to stagnate, and expansion is the only course left open.

Desires can only be fulfilled through a continual bloating.

In order for the other country to remain strong and for the wealthy to stay wealthy, the leaders of the other country made war on the neighboring country.

"Any minute now," the boy says, looking out to sea again with a carefree laugh.

"The bright rain is going to fall, way out over the sea."

The war was supposed to have ended quickly. Everyone in the other country believed that with overwhelming wealth and strength, it would be easy for them to bring the neighboring country to its knees.

To be sure, at first he war went according to plan. The occupied areas grew each day, and the entire populace of the other country became drunk with victory.

One after another, however, the surrounding countries took the side of the neighboring country. Which was only natural. For if the neighboring country fell, they themselves might be the other country's next target.

The other country's entire diplomatic strategy failed. Which was only natural. For no country on earth will make friends with a country that only knows how to flaunt its wealth and power.

An allied force was organized around the neighboring country. Together, the surrounding countries sought to encircle and seal off the other country.

From that point on, the war entered a stalemate. Limited battle zones saw troops advancing and retreating again and again, in the course of which the other country's wealth and power was consumed little by little. Disgust for war began to spread among the populace, and to obliterate that mood, the military circulated false propaganda:

_The military situation is developing in our favor._

_our army has again crushed the enemy's troops._

The truth was that the occupied territories were being recaptured one after another, and the allied forces now were crossing the border to strike inside the other country's territory.

_In response to a foolhardy attack by the enemy, our resolute fighting men launched a counterattack, annihilating their forces._

_The day for our victory song is upon us._

Stopping the war was out of the question. Admitting defeat was out of the question. The people had believed that wealth and power would enable them to rule everything, but now they knew the terror of having lost both.

The allied forces were joined by a powerful supporter. A mighty empire that wielded authority over the northern part of the continent joined the battle as if to say, "Let us finish the job for you." crushing the other country once and for all.

But the powerful empire was not satisfied just to destroy one upstart nation. It tuned its overwhelming military might upon the allied forces. As it had so many times in its history, it seized the opportunity of its clash with the surrounding countries in order to further expand its own power.

Having lost its leaders and been turned into a wasteland as far as the eye could see, the other country now became the new battlefield.

Outnumbered, the allied arm hired mercenaries from another continent.

Kaim was one of those.

For many days he participated in a losing battle in which there was no way to tell which side was fighting for the right.

After seeing his mercenary unit wiped out, Kaim headed for the harbor.

The boy's island has maintained a position of neutrality in the war. It is simply too small to do otherwise. It lacks the war-making capacity to participate in battle, and it possesses no wealth to attract the attention of the countries engaged in the fighting.

But Kaim knows what will happen.

When the battle lines expand, this island will become valuable as a military foothold. One side or the other will occupy the island and it will do one of two things: it will construct a base, or it will reduce the entire island to ashes, thus preventing the enemy from using it as a military foothold. Nor is this matter of the distant future. At the least, it will happen a few weeks from now, and perhaps as soon as two or three days...

Kaim has come to the island to convey this message.

To tell the people that as many of them as possible should board tomorrow morning's regular ferry to the nearby island.

He wants them to start by sending away the children.

He hopes never again to witness the spectacle of young lives being crushed like so many bugs.

"Oh, look! There it goes!" the boy cries out happily, pointing toward the horizon. "The bright rain!"

Far out to sea, a white glow suffuses the night sky. The powerful empire has begun its night bombing.

The boy has no idea what the bright rain really is. He can watch with sparkling eyes and murmur, "It's so pretty, so pretty..."

To be sure, viewed from afar, the bright rain is genuinely beautiful, like a million shooting stars crossing the sky all at once.

But only when viewed from afar.

A dull thud resounds from the sky.

Another dull thud, and another and another.

"Thunder? Oh, no, if it rains we can't go out fishing tomorrow," the boy says with a smile and a shrug.

He's such a friendly little fellow, thinks Kaim.

The boy had seen him on the shore and spoken to him without hesitation.

"Are you a traveler?" he had asked, and went on speaking to him like an old friend.

Kaim wants children like this to be the first aboard tomorrow's ferry.

"I'm going home now," says the boy. "What are you going to do?"

"Oh, I guess I'll take a nap under a tree."

"You can sleep in our barn. Why don't you spend the night there?"

"Thanks," Kaim says, "But I want to watch the ocean a little longer. Tomorrow, though, I'd like you to show me around."

"I get it. You want to see the head of the village. I know a shortcut through the woods--right over there."

Kaim is hoping to convince the village head to evacuate the island. If they act right away, they can make it. They can save a lot of the islanders.

But...

As the boy stands, sweeping the sand from the seat of his pants, he looks questioningly at the sky.

"Funny," he says, "it sounds kind of different from thunder."

The dull thuds keep coming without a break.

Little by little, they draw closer.

Kaim jerks his head up and yells at the boy, "The woods! Run to the woods!"

"Wha...?"

"Hurry!"

His voice is drowned out by the deafening roar of machine guns.

The bright rain has started.

The island has been made a target far sooner than Kaim had imagined.

"Hurry!" Kaim yells, grabbing the boy's hand.

The woods are the boy's only hope.

"Hey, wait a minute!" the boy shouts, shaking free of Kaim's grip and looking up at the sky.

"It's the bright rain! It's falling here now, too! Wow! Oh, wow!"

All but dancing for joy, the boy gallops down the beach--until he is bathed from head to toe in the bright rain.

* * *

A single nigh of bombing is all it takes to reduce the island to ashes.

Never realizing the value of the happiness they possessed, never even knowing that such happiness has been snatched away from them in one night's passing, the people who filled the island with their lives until evening are gone in the morning, all dead except one: the immortal Kaim.

On the beach at dawn, the only sound is that of the waves.

Again today, no doubt, urban warfare will decimate the city streets, and tonight, the bright rain will pour down on the town again.

The boy who called the rain beautiful will never again open his eyes wide with wonder.

Kaim lays the boy's corpse in a small dugout canoe that survived the flames.

He places a ripe "Grain of Happiness" on the boy's chest and folds his arms over it, hoping that it will slake his thirst on the long road to heaven.

He sets the dugout in the water and nudges it toward the open sea.

Caught by the receding tide, rocked by the waves, the boat glides far out from the shore.

Such a friendly little fellow, the boy smiles even in death. Perhaps it is the one gift the gods were able to bestow on him.

The boy is setting out on a journey.

May it never take him to that other country, Kaim begs.

Or any country for that matter.

Kaim knows: there is no place forever free of that bright rain.

Because he knows this, he sheds tears for the boy.

The rain falls in his heart: cold, sad, silent rain.

Emptied of bombs, the sky is maddeningly blue, wide, and beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: There is pretty much nothing left to say except that this is what happens when a less stronger place got wipeout in a single strike from a more powerful country.
> 
> And for the record, you can send me any euphemism, code names or hidden names for air strikes and well as sitting sources, whether it is real or it is given as such in a work of fiction. I can wait.


	23. The Ranking of Lives

A terrible epidemic is ravaging the kingdom.

The onset of the disease is sudden. Due to genetic or perhaps hormonal facts, it strikes only males. The victim experiences a high fever, a violent headache, and often a swift death.

The disease does have two hopeful aspects.

First of all, once an individual survives it, he need not fear catching it again: from then on he has immunity.

Secondly, an extremely effective medicine exists. If used preventatively or in the initial stages of the disease, the drug, a tablet made primarily from a plant that grows in the mountains, almost always results in a cure.

Does this mean people can relax, and that there is no need to worry?

Unfortunately not, for an ironic twist of fate is something that life tends to thrust upon people all too often.

The high-altitude plant used to make the medicine that is so effective in prevention and early cure is extremely rare, verging on extinction.

In other words, there is not enough medicine for all the kingdom's subjects, only for certain people.

* * *

"Do you see what I mean?" asks Dok, a quiet man on patrol in the capital's marketplace with his fellow military policeman, Kaim.

Sending his sharp gaze down one alley after another, Kaim responds, "You're saying they rank people to decide who gets the medicine?"

"Exactly," says Dok.

"In deciding the rank order, they brand us as either 'Subjects Indispensable to the Nation' or 'Other Subjects.'"

Capital military policemen will receive their medicine relatively early, which demonstrates their ranking as "Subjects Indispensable to the Nation."

"I guess it makes sense," Dok goes on. "If all of us were to keel over, order in the capital would break down like nothing. We always have to be the picture of health as we patrol the city, right, Kaim? 'For the sake of the homeland,' as they say."

"I suppose so..."

"First the royal family gets the medicine. Then the royal guards. Third come the politicians, and then the financiers who run the country's economy, the police and firemen, doctors, and finally us--the capital military police. There's not enough to give it to just anybody."

Dok all but spits out those final words, and he asks, "What do you think, Kaim? Ordinary subjects are people, too. Is it okay to 'rank' them like that?"

In theory, Kaim should be able to reply without hesitation that of course it is not okay.

But, realistically speaking, he says, "There's no way around it." He averts his gaze from Dok's as he hears himself saying these words.

"No way around it, huh?" he mutters with obvious distaste. "Maybe you're right. Maybe there is no way around it."

He sounds as if he is trying to convince himself. In fact, it does seem to be the only means open to them.

"The folks here in the marketplace know about the disease, obviously."

"Obviously," answers Dok.

"If their fears get the better of them, they could riot at any time."

"Absolutely."

"We can just manage to keep the peace by patrolling the streets like this."

"I know what you mean."

"If we were to succumb to the disease, their lives would be put all the more at risk. If we can't dose every subject in the kingdom, all we can do is think about how best to keep the harm or the impact of the disease to an absolute minimum."

"I couldn't have said it better myself, Kaim. You get a perfect score. Good job!"

His words of praise carry obvious barbs.

Sensing their presence, Kaim falls silent. Underlying Dok's sharp comments is not only the pain of biting sarcasm but the sorrow of helplessness.

Two children, a boy and a younger girl, run past the men, laughing. Dressed in rags, they have probably come from the slum behind the market to gather scraps of vegetables little better than garbage.

Dok points to their receding forms and says,

"I'd like to ask you a question, Kaim."

"All right..."

"Are those kids 'Subjects Indispensable to the Nation'?"

Kaim has no answer for him. Because he knows the right answer all too well, he can only lapse into silence.

Responding to Kaim's silence with a bitter smile, Dok goes on.

"According to your logic, Kaim, if those kids fall sick and die, 'There's no way around it.' Or at least capital police like us have a greater right to the medicine than those kids do. Am I right, Kaim? Isn't that what you're saying?"

Kaim could hardly declare that he was wrong.

Responding again to Kaim's silence, Dok says,

"Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not attacking you. It's just that everybody is indispensable to somebody. Even those kids. They may be just a nuisance to the state--poor beggars--but to their parents they arei ndispensable lives that must be protected at all cost. Am I wrong?"

 _What a kindhearted fellow,_ Kaim thinks, _maybe too kind--to a degree that could prove fatal for a soldier._

From the direction of the castle comes the sound of the great bell--an emergency assembly signal to the soldiers patrolling the streets.

The medicine seems to have arrived for them.

"Let's head back," Dok pipes up, apparently emerging from his gloom. "Let's be good boys and take the miraculous medicine that's going to save our lives and protect the kingdom."

The sorrow-filled thorns sprouting from his words pierce Kaim through the heart.

* * *

It is the following day when Dok tells Kaim of his plan to desert.

"I'm only telling this to you, Kaim," he says when they are patrolling the marketplace again. "I know the punishment for desertion is harsh. I'm not sure I can make it all the way, and if I'm caught, I know I'll be court-martialed and executed."

He has resigned himself to that possibility, he says, which is why he wants to make sure that Kaim knows the purpose of his desertion.

"I'm not betraying the country or the army. I just have to deliver...this."

In his open palm lies the tablet that he was issued the day before.

"You didn't take it?" Kaim asks, shocked.

"No, I fooled them," he chuckles, immediately turning serious again and closing his open hand.

"You're going to deliver this tablet?"

"Uh-huh."

Dok holds out his hand now, pointing toward the mountains south of the capital.

"At the food of those mountains is the village where I was born. My wife and son are there. He's just five years old and he's been sickly since the day he was born. If he gets the disease, it's all over for him."

"So you're going to give him the medicine?"

"Do you think it's wrong of me to do that?"

Transfixed by Dok's stare, Kaim is at a loss for words.

Suddenly the gentle Dok's eyes betray a murderous gleam.

"I may be a soldier dedicated to protecting the nation, but before that I am the father of a son, and before that I am a human being.

I don't give a damn about the kingdom's ranking of lives according to whether or not they are 'indispensable.'

I want to save the life of one human being who is indispensable to me."

Dok's eyes take on added strength. They are bloodshot now, clear proof of his resolve.

"If I leave now, I can be back in the barracks by roll call tomorrow morning. I'll leave home as soon as I give him the medicine, so I'm asking you to do me this one favor: don't cause any commotion until then."

"No, of course not, but..."

"I'm not sure I can make it, but I am sure my boy will die if I just stay here. He'll pull through if he has the medicine. If there's even the slightest possibility of that, I have no choice: I have to take a chance."

"They'll kill you if they catch you."

"I don't care. I can die with pride, knowing I did it to save the life of the one person most important to me."

"What if _you_ get sick?"

"All I can do is leave it up to fate."

Dok smiles.

"Human beings can't do anything about fate, but I do want to do everything I can _as_ a human being."

This is why Dok has revealed his plans to Kaim.

"One more thing, Kaim. If they kill me or if I get sick and die, I hope I can depend on you to visit my village sometime and tell my wife and son what happened.

Make sure they know that I didn't desert because I got fed up with the army. I did it to save my son's life, which is something that is way more important to me than army rules and even more important than my own life."

He will be satisfied as long as that message gets through, he says with a smile. Kaim has no way to reply to this.

Not that Kaim fully accepts everything Dok has said to him. He is convinced not so much by the man's reasoning as he is overwhelmed by something that transcends reasoning: by the power of life, by the strength and depth of Dok's desire to save a life precisely because it is something that will eventually be cut off by death.

"I'm going to make a run for it while we're patrolling the marketplace. I'm asking you to look the other way. Tell them I disappeared when you took your eyes off me for a split second."

Kaim can do nothing but accept Dok's plea in silence.

He sees that deep in the hearts of those who love finite life is a place that cannot be entered by those who have been burdened irrevocably with life everlasting.

The two men reach the far end of the marketplace.

"All right, then, sorry to put you through this..." Dok says.

He turns toward the exit and is about to plunge into the crowd when it happens.

A child comes bounding out of the alleyway.

It is the same shabbily dressed girl from the slums who ran past the men yesterday, laughing. Today she is alone and crying her head off.

She looks around with wild eyes, and when she spots Kaim and Dok in uniform, she comes running to them, shouting, "Help! Help!"

"What's the matter?" Dok asks.

She takes his hand and leads him into the alleyway as if to prevent the surrounding people from hearing what she is about to tell him.

"It's my brother!" she blurts out. "He's sick! He's got a high fever and he's shaking all over! We've got to do something or he's going to die!"

Kaim and Dok look at each other.

"How about your parents? Don't you have a father or mother to take care of him?" Kaim asks.

"What parents?" the girl retorts tearfully. "They both died a long time ago. There's just me and my big brother. Oh please help him, please!"

"But I was just..." Dok mutters, fidgeting, ready to run. He looks at Kaim with pleading eyes.

Kaim kneels down and looks the girl straight in the eye. "When did his fever start?" he asks.

"Just a few minutes ago," she says. "We were leaving to pick up vegetable scraps, and he fell down..."

Only a little time has passed since the disease struck. He could still be saved by the medicine.

But of course there is no medicine for slum children.

Judging from the girl's wasted frame, her brother must also be eating poorly. The disease will almost surely ravage his malnourished body and snatch his life in a matter of hours.

The girl will not come down with the disease of course, but even if it cannot attack her directly, once she has lost the only other member of her family and has no one to take care of her, the tiny thing is bound to trace the same fatal path as her parents and brother sooner or later.

"Please help my brother... please!"

She clings to Kaim and Dok, huge tears streaming down her cheeks.

Kaim gives her a slight, silent nod. He rises slowly and reaches for a small leather pouch dangling from his sword hilt.

Before he can lay hold of it, he hears Dok saying to the little girl, "Don't worry."

Dok is holding out his hand to her, smiling gently.

In the palm of his hand is a tablet.

"Give this to your brother," Dok says, "There's still time to save him."

The girl gives him a puzzled look and hesitates until he urges her, "Hurry, Do it now!"

She reaches for it uncertainly and takes it in hand with great care.

"Hurry home, now!"

Dok says with a smile for her. The girl dashes off.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

Her shrill, tearful voice rings out as she disappears into the alleyway.

"I'm glad it worked out like this, Kaim,"

Dok says with a shrug and a pained smile. "So now I won't be branded a deserter, and I won't have to give you anything to worry about. No, this is a good thing."

He sounds as if he istrying to convince himself. He even nods deeply in agreement.

Surely he cannot have done this without regrets, especially if his son at home should take sick and die.

His voice is calm, however, as he says, "I couldn't help it. When I saw that little girl crying like that... I know my son would understand." He gives himself another deep nod.

"Still, Dok..."

"Never mind. Don't say a thing." Dok cuts him off and squints toward the alleyway the girl ran down.

"There's absolutely no rank order to lives. The only thing that matters is to save a life you see with your own two eyes."

"I know what you mean," says Kaim.

"Just because I saved one slum kid's life, there's no guarantee he'll grow up to be a credit to the nation.

Maybe all I succeeded in doing was prolonging the life of yet another drag on the state. Maybe after I get back to the barracks, I'll start thinking of other people I should have saved instead of him."

"On the other hand, Kaim," he says, interrupting himself and turning to look at Kaim as he considers yet another possibility:

"On the other hand, I look at it this way, too. Maybe it is just a matter of innate human instinct to want to save the life before your eyes.

Maybe we learn those other kinds of ranking later: 'for the nation,' or 'for the people,' or even 'for my son.'

I may have failed as a soldier or as a father, but I think I did the right thing as a human being."

Dok stops himself there and starts walking without waiting for Kaim to reply. He might be tryin to hide his embarrassment at his own tortured reasoning.

Seeing this, Kaim produces a laugh and calls out to Dok as casually as if he were suggesting they go to the taverns for drinks.

"Hey, Dok!"

"Uh-huh?"

"You forgot this!"

Now Kaim finishes what he interrupted before, reaching for the leather pouch tied to his sword hilt.

From it he takes a small pill.

"What? You mean..."

"I didn't take it."

Incapable of losing his life to a disease, Kaim had no use for the medicine to begin with.

Of course he has no intention of telling Dok about that. Even if he were to try telling him that he has lived a thousand years, it is not likely that Dok would take him seriously.

"You have a family, Dok. Lives you'd give anything to protect.

That is a great thing."

Now Kaim holds out a hand with a tablet in it the way Dok did earlier to the girl.

"I envy you," he says with a smile.

"Wait, Kaim, wait... hey, I mean you..."

"I don't have a family," he says, increasing the depth of his smile..

Responding to Kaim's smile, with its mixture of loneliness and warmth, Dok silently accepts the tablet.

"Well now, would you look at that beautiful blue sky!" says Kaim.

"I think I'll just stand here a while, looking up at it, not thinking about anything at all. This might be a good time for you to run home to your son."

Kaim does as he says, looking up at the sky.

Before long, he hears the sound of footsteps runing across the stone pavement.

"Make sure you come back alive, Dok," Kaim mutters.

Kaim strolls along, looking up at the blue sky, until he disappears into the marketplace crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR's NOTE: An epidemic is a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over an area such as a community in a particular time. This is different from a pandemic, which is a widespread occurrence within a large area, a country or even the whole world.


	24. The Village Closest to Heaven

In this village ringed by jagged mountains, the women give birth to many children,

Five or six is not uncommon. Just the other day, the wife of the village headman gave birth to her tenth child.

"And why do you think that is?" the young fellow asks the traveler, looking down at the snow-blanketed village.

Kaim cocks his head in search of an answer.

Meanwhile, the young man takes something like a piece of crystal candy from a leather pouch. He pops it into his mouth and says with a laugh, "Because they die right away."

"The children?"

"Uh-huh. Hardly anybody grows up to be an adult. Most kids die after five or six short summers. Look at the village headman's wife: she's lost seven kids already."

Whether from a genetic problem or a disease endemic to the area, the people of this village have always lived short lives, he says, from way, way back.

"Now that you mention it," says Kaim, "I haven't seen any old people here."

"See what I mean? A few decades ago, I'm told, one person lived to be fifty, but people say that's the oldest anyone ever got in the whole history of the village.

This is why we give birth to lots of kids--give birth to a lot and lose a lot.

If just one of them lives into adulthood, though, the family line is saved and the village history continues. You see my point?"

The young man is sixteen, as if his wife.

Their first child is due to be born any day now--literally today or tomorrow.

The young man crunches down on the candy in his mouth, "Let's get going," he says, and around his wrists he winds the ropes he uses to pull the sled. He hasn't loaded the sled yet, but dragging it up the steep, snow-covered road is hard work. This, he says, is why the pay is so good.

Only a few days earlier, he lost his good friend and fellow worker, who had been three years his senior. When Kaim happened along, the young man asked him if he would help by pushing the sled from behind until they cleared the pass. Kaim agreed, and they became an instant team.

Kaim circles around to the back of the sled and asks,

"You don't have any animals to pull the sled?"

"Afraid not," says the young man. "I know it's strange, but our horses and cattle and donkeys all die young. You can spend a lot of money at the town market buying an animal, and it'll keel over before it's done a lick of work. Finally, the best way is for us humans to plow the fields and pull the sleds ourselves."

The arms with which the young man himself is pulling his sled are massive, and he forges through the road's snowy cover with powerful steps.

His fellow worker was stronger still, he says. "He taught me how to pull the sled, how to set rabbit traps, how to build a fire... all the skills I need to live, with all the love he would give to a kid brother. Before I knew it, he was gone."

People here always die suddenly, he says. "They can be perfectly healthy one minute and drop dead the next. No time for suffering. Just like that. No time to call a doctor. Even if a doctor comes, there's nothing he can do."

"Did your friend die that way?"

"Uh-huh. He was shoveling the snow that piled up overnight, clearing the road, when he dropped dead. By the time we ran over to help him, he was gone. That's how it always is. Always. That's how they die. Grown0ups, kids... everyone."

"And you, too, then..."

"I guess so. Nobody knows when the moment is coming. It might be decades from now, or it could be tomorrow..."

After this cool pronouncement, the young man turns to look at Kaim and, pointing to his own chest, says with a smile, "Or maybe even now."

The smile is genuine, without a hint of despair or bitterness toward the cruelty of his fate.

"Aren't you afraid to die?" Kaim starts to ask him but stops himself. It's a stupid question, he decides, and one that he is not qualified to ask.

Where could a man burdened with eternal life find appropriate words to speak to a man burdened with the threat of sudden death?

Kaim and the young man keep dragging the sled up the step mountain path. Their destination is the lake beyond the pass. The young mans job calls for him to cut ice from the surface of the frozen lake and transport it back to the village.

"We in the village call the lake the 'Spring of Life.'

If you trace the source of water that bubbles out of the ground here and there in the village, you always wind up at the Spring of Life."

Kaim nods silently.

"The ice from the Spring of Life takes forever to melt. That's why, look, you can even do this..."

Again the young man takes a piece of the crystal candy--or, rather, ice--from his leather pouch and puts it in his mouth.

"It gives you energy. It's indispensable when doing hard work or for pregnant women or infants. Just a piece in your mouth and it gives you instant strength."

The young man offers a piece to Kaim, who nods again in silence.

"We're really not supposed to give any to outsiders, but you're special 'cause I'm putting you to work. If I give it to you, though, I want you to help me load the ice on the sled. I can handle it by myself on the way back."

Kaim silently accepts the ice from the young man, who assures him, "It tastes good, too," and watches him, smiling. Kaim averts his gaze somewhat and puts the piece in his mouth.

The ice should but nothing but frozen water, but it has a mild sweetness.

just as Kaim expected.

He spits it out when the young man is not looking.

 _Poison. I know that taste,_ thinks Kaim.

The village people are used to this taste, so they think nothing of it. Without a doubt, though, there is poison in the ice.

The long flow of time smoothes over the wounds inflicted by history. The permanently snow-capped peaks make people forget the existence of the wide world on the other side.

The young man calls this lake the Spring of Life, but those who lived far beyond the mountains, at the source of the river that feeds the lake, used to know it as the Pit of Death.

Long, long ago--several hundred years ago--the entire area around the river's source was polluted with the poisonous metallic outflow from a mine.

The river was filled with dead fish floating belly-up, and the poisonous gas that rose like a mist from the ground killed both the earthbound animals and the birds in the sky.

The forests withered, and the lively town that had grown up with the development of the mine became a deserted ruin.

Nature took many years to recover, but the forests eventually turned green again, which attracted small animals and eventually the larger animals that hunted them.

People, however, never came back, and there was no one left to hand down the story of the tragedy that occurred at the river's source deep in the mountains.

The only one who knows everything that happened is Kaim, the man who has lived a thousand years.

The young man stands by the frozen lake and takes a nice, satisfying stretch.

"You know," he says to the traveler, "I sometimes think this village just might be the closest one to Heaven in the whole world. Perhaps it's because we are too close to Heaven that we're all summoned by the gods early on. Don't you think that might be true?"

Kaim says nothing in response to this.

Over many years, this lake has accumulated the metallic poison that flowed into it from upstream. And over many years the poison that infiltrated the soil has mingled with the ground water, bubbling up in the spring water with which the villagers slake their thirst.

No one knows the exact chemical makeup of the poison, but at least it does not cause the villagers to suffer until, at the last moment of their lives, the accumulated poison suddenly takes its toll. This may be its one fortunate aspect. On the other hand, this might simply make the misfortune it brings all the more conspicuous.

"Still," the young man says as he saws off a piece of ice by the shore.

"I do hope that the children my wife and I have will be able to live longer lives--say, if we have five, at least one of them will live long enough to grow up and have kids. That way, for me, it would be like finding some meaning in having been born into this world. It was the same with my father and mother, and my grandparents. They all had lots of kids and mourned the loss of lots of kids but managed to raise one or two to adulthood before they died That's what gives our life meaning."

He wipes the sweat from his brown and puts another piece of ice candy in his mouth.

 _If I were to tell him everything I know,_ thinks Kaim, _if I were to tell him everything that has been buried in the darkness of history, and if he were to tell the other villagers, the tragedy might not have to be repeated._

The young man says, "When a baby is born here, they ring the village bell. Also when someone dies. The same for both: birth and death are like two sides of the same coin. So there's no sadness when someone dies. Everybody sees them off with a smile and a wish: 'You go ahead of us to Heaven and save a good spot there for us.' Do you understand that sentiment?"

"I do," says Kaim. "I do."

"That's how we've always done it: welcoming lots of new lives to the village and sending lots of lives off to Heaven. I've never been much of a student, so I don't know exactly how to put this, but I kind of think maybe 'the village closest to Heaven' is a place where life and death are right next door to each other."

The young man gives Kaim an embarrassed smile at the sound of his own words.

"Maybe it's because I'm about to have a kid of my own that I'm starting to think about these complicate things."

"No, that's fine. I see exactly what you mean." Kaim says.

The moment the words leave his mouth,

a bell sounds from the foot of the hill--

several long, slow rings.

"That's it!" exclaims the young man. "My child has been born!"

He dips his head and says again, as if savoring the sound of his own words, "My child!"

While the bell is rung likewise for births and deaths, the young man says, the sound in each case is subtly different. When a young villager learns to tell the two apart, he or she is considered to be an adult.

"I hope this one lives a long time..." the young man says, choking with the flood of emotions that show on his face, but then he goes on as if to negate his own hopes for the future:

"Either way, whether it lives a long time or not, my child has now been born into this world. That's all that matters. I'm so happy, so happy..."

Eyes full of tears, he turns a beatific smile on Kaim.

And then--

Still smiling, he collapses where he stands.

Kaim lays the young man's corpse on the sled and returns to the village.

As the young man said, the villagers accept his death with the same smiles they had for the birth of his baby.

Death is not a time for sorrow. It simply marks whether one has been called to Heaven earlier or later.

The young man's wife takes an ice candy from the leather pouch he has left behind and places it gently into the baby's mouth.

"I want you to grow up to be strong and healthy," she says.

"Daddy is saving a wonderful place for you up in Heaven. But go there slowly, slowly... and until you go to Heaven, I want you to grow up here in the village till you're nice and big."

Her words have the gentle tone of a lullaby.

Kaim says nothing. If he is to stand unflinchingly for what is right, his silence may be a crime. But, burdened with eternal life, Kaim knows how suspect the "right" can be. Throughout history, people have fought and wounded and killed each other in the name of what they declare to be "right". By comparison, the look on the dead young man's face is tranquility itself.

The "village closest to Heaven" is filled with happiness indeed.

The baby starts to cry, its loud wailing like a celebration of the beginning of its own life, however short that life is likely to be.

Kaim leaves the village with a smile on his face.

The village bell begins to peal, reverberating with utter clarity through the distant mountains as if to bestow a blessing on the young man who lived life to the fullest with neither resentment nor regret.

_And when this too-long life of mine draws to a close,_

Kaim thinks,

_I'd like to be sent off with the sound of bells like this if possible._

Because he knows that day will never come, Kaim walks on, never stopping, never looking back.

His long journey is far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Toxic chemicals used by mines to treat extracted ore and metal are usually deposited into nearby bodies of water. Interestingly, I'm not well-versed with heavy metal poisonings since there are several types of such poisonings although I do know that heavy metals are sometimes involved in the chemical processes of mining. Regardless, it has adverse effects within the environment and the people around it.
> 
> DEFINITION:  
> Beatific - blissfully happy  
> "A beatific smile."


	25. Stones of Heaven

The waterfall lies deep in the forest, more than a day's travel from the nearest village.

It is said to be a holy place.

In search of the divine amid the towering peaks, pilgrims stand beneath the plunging falls in their final ascetic practice.

The water of the falls is freezing cold.

All it takes is a momentary lapse of concentration, and the person is hammered down by the rushing water.

The pilgrims call this waterfall the Stones of Heaven.

Heaven is testing their mental and physical strength, they say, by hurling an endless stream of "stones" down upon them in the form of the powerful waterfall.

"And the stones have a mysterious power," a former pilgrim says to Kaim with a pained smile. He himself failed in this final austerity, he adds.

"Different Stones of Heaven fall on each person. It's as if they can see into your heart."

"What do you mean?" Kaim asks.

"The burdens you bore and the dreams you dreamed in the secular world appear to you one after another."

In his own case, he says, what came to him first were the voices of women.

"The water plunging down into the basin of the falls began to sound like women's voices. Sweet voices whispering in my ear, voices sobbing, voices moaning in a lover's embrace... an incredible variety. And for better or worse I knew every single one of them. Some I was thrilled to hear again, while others I hated remembering."

"Meaning, you've gotten yourself into a lot of trouble involving women?"

"I have indeed. Not to boast or anything, but that was one battlefield I knew better than anybody. I survived, but I made a lot of women cry, and there were a lot of them I loved. My whole purpose in undertaking the austerities was to put that life behind me, but the Stones of Heaven know what they're doing. In the final, final test, they go after your greatest weakness. If you waver the slightest bit, you've had it. The water slams you down, and your austerities are over."

The man feeds a stick of kindling into the campfire.

"And I'm not the only one," he continues.

"One fellow heard the voice of the mother he hadn't seen since he was a little boy; another heard the voice of his dead child."

"Is it always voices?"

"I wish it were. If you hold up through the voices, the waterfall's mist starts changing into the shapes of people. You might see somebody who you hated so much in the secular world that you wanted to kill him, or it might be some loan shark you had to go into hiding to get away from.

One little flinch and you're done for."

This particular austerity can be performed only once. There are no second chances.

Someone who has persevered for a whole day and night but who fails in the end has no choice but to return to the secular world in defeat, as this man did.

"Not that it was easy for me to get on my feet again once I was back there, either."

The man chuckles and calls out to a young pilgrim. Or, more precisely, to a young man who was a pilgrim until a few moments ago but who has just now dragged himself up to the lip of the basin in utter dejection.

"Hey, young fellow, the campfire's over here. I've got liquor to warm up your insides, and some fresh-grilled meat. Get a little of that in your stomach and you'll have the strength to make it down to the village."

The man now makes his living as master of the teahouse by the waterfall. Of course, pilgrims undergoing austerities carry no money with them, but the man is not expecting to become rich doing this work.

For bodies chilled by long hours of pounding under the waterfall, he provides a warming fire, food and drink, and sometimes even money to tide them over when they first go down to the village. Payment can be made at any time. The men can bring him the money after they have started to take in earnings again from jobs they find in the secular world.

He sets no date for repayment. He takes no IOUs. He says he is fine with that.

"Aren't there some who don't pay at all?" Kaim asks.

"Of course there are," the man says matter-of-factly. "But I think of my running this teahouse as another kind of discipline for myself."

"Another kind of discipline?"

"That's right. The Stones of Heaven will accept only the strongest pilgrims, the ones unperturbed by anything. The role I want to play is to accept the ones who were broken by the Stones of Heaven--the weak human beings. I want to go on accepting the weakest of the weak. The kind who not only succumb to the Stones of Heaven but who even fail to pay for their food and drink afterwards!"

"That is your kind of discipline?"

"Exactly. It makes for a hard living, that's for sure. I thought I was prepared to deal with cheats and weaklings, but there are a lot more of those than I ever bargained for," he declares with a hearty laugh.

But then he quickly turns serious and says, "To tell you the truth, I think of this less as a form of discipline than as a way to gen even."

"Get even? With whom?"

"With those gods or whatever they are that keep hurling down their Stones of Heaven.

Human beings are weak--shockingly so, in the eyes of a god. But I think, and this is not just because of what happened to me, that being weak is the best thing about human beings. Weakness can make us cunning, but it can also make us kind. Weakness can torment us, but it can just as easily be our salvation.

Don't you see? If the gods are hurling down their Stones of Heaven just to make people aware of their own weakness--just to make us savor our own powerlessness--then I'd just ass soon drop my trousers and moon them. I'll slap my bare butt and say to them,

'I'm not like you! I'm not going to punish human beings for being weak! I accept them for what they are, weakness and all!'"

The man feeds a new piece of kindling to the fire and says with a shy shrug, "I guess I got carried away."

Kaim smiles and shakes his head as if to say, "Not at all."

"Tell me, though." the man goes on, "I see you're a traveler, but you don't seem to be a pilgrim."

"You're right, I'm not," Kaim says. "I was trying to cross over the pass and took the wrong road."

"Well, the, as long as you're here, why not give the Stones of Heaven a try? It'll be something to talk about."

"No, thanks," Kaim says, smiling.

"What's the matter? Afraid they're going to show you whatever it is that shakes you up?" The man smiles and nods, "Can't say I blame you, though."

The man is mistaken about Kaim. He is not the least bit afraid of such a thing.

What scares him is the opposite prospect. That of _not_ being shaken up. Of encountering in himself a person unmoved by anything at all.

"Anyway, it would be suicide to jump into the waterfall without preparation."

"How's that?"

"It's freezing cold, for one thing. There's even colder water bubbling up from a spring in the basin. Even the most well-conditioned person has to be careful and take time to accustom himself to the low temperature. If you go in all at once, it can stop your heart."

The man jerks his chin in the direction of the falls as if to say, "Look at them."

Two new pilgrims are preparing themselves for the challenge of the Stones of Heaven.

The men appear to be brothers. The older one kneels at the edge of the basin, splashing himself and massaging the cold water into his skin from foot- to heart-level. The younger brother is too impatient for that. He wants to jump right under the falls. The elder brother cautions him and takes all the time he needs to accustom himself to the water's coldness.

He exudes the quiet power of one who has withstood the most rigorous training.

"Aha," the teahouse owner says to Kaim, smiling, "we're in for a rare privilege. I think we are about to see the first successful attempt in a long while."

"You can tell?" Kaim asks.

"You can if you've spent as much time here as I have. The winners and losers are decided before the men ever steps under the falls."

Having completed his meticulous preparations, the elder brother enters the basin. Even then, the steps he takes are slow and cautious.

The younger brother follows him in, kicking up a spray with every step.

"The younger one is hopeless," says the man with a sigh, adding another stick of kindling to the fire.

"I'd better get the liquor ready now," he mutters to himself.

The brothers stand side by side beneath the pounding waterfall. The Stones of Heaven rain down upon them.

As the man predicted, the elder brother, utterly calm, stands up to the onslaught of images sent by the Stones of Heaven.

Also as the man predicted, the younger brother yields to the Stones of Heaven and is beaten down into the basin of the waterfall.

But then something happens that goes far beyond what the man predicted.

Writhing in agony, the younger brother bobs helplessly in the basin, unable to raise himself.

He is drowning.

He tears at his own chest. His heart is failing. He was not fully prepared to enter the icy water.

"Help me, brother, please!"

But the elder brother doesn't move. He remains under the waterfall in total concentration.

"Hey, what are you doing there? Hurry and help him!" the man yells, but the elder brother's expression remains unchanged. He never flinches.

"He's drowning! You can't just leave him like that. He'll die!"

The elder brother never moves.

He grits his teeth, keeping his eyes clamped shut, and shows no sign of moving out from under the waterfall, as if to declare, "This is it! This is the final test of the Stones of Heaven!"

The man screams at him, "You idiot!" and dives into the roiling basin in a rash effort to help the younger brother.

For the moment his untrained body hits the frigid water, the shock of it seizes his heart.

Still he reaches out toward the drowning brother, who is sinking beneath the surface.

A great shudder goes through him and with an enormous groan he takes hold of the young man's wrist and pulls his limp body toward him.

He tries to return to the shore, but his strength gives out and he falls back into the water.

Next it is Kaim's turn to dive into the basin beneath the falls. He takes hold of the two unconscious men and drags them toward the shore.

The Stones of Heaven pour down on Kaim, and he is assaulted by one vision after another--

battlefields,

scenes from his wanderings,

shooting stars,

the climbing and sinking sun,

raging winds,

and countless deaths of those he has come to know on the road of his all-too-long life.

 _It will do you no good,_ he silently declares to the gods hurling the Stones of Heaven at him.

_My heart remains unmoved. I have lived through a reality far crueler than any phantom you can show me._

Whether or not his life is a sign of his strength, he does not know. He will not boast of it, nor will he tell the tale to others.

He has, however, lived it: that much is certain. He has lived it through the years.

Kaim climbs onto the shore and lays the limp bodies of the teahouse master and the younger brother beside the fire.

As he warms himself, he thinks, _The gods who hurl the Stones of Heaven are inferior gods._

If they could truly see into everything, they would never have been foolish enough to show Kaim scenes from his past. For what would disturb him most of all would be the unwelcome sight of moments from his own limitless future.

And if they were to ask him one simple question, "For what purpose were you born?" his knees would buckle in an instant.

The first to regain consciousness is the young pilgrim.

The teahouse master's condition is critical. Kaim's attempts to warm him and massage his clenched heart have little effect.

"Pull yourself together now! Look, we've got a fire here--the fire you built! Let it warm you!"

Kaim shouts into his ear until the man finally manages to force his eyes open a crack and move his purple lips.

"Is...is her...all right?"

"Sure, he's fine, don't worry."

"Oh, good...good..."

"Pull yourself together, man!"

"Tell me, though...is strength the same as coldness?"

"Never mind! Stop talking!"

"Because if that is true...if strength is coldness, I don't want any part of it..."

The man gives Kaim a faint smile and closes his eyes.

He will never open them again.

Human beings are weak and fragile.

All it takes for a person to die is for a fist-sized organ to stop beating.

Human kindness, on the other hand, may derive from everyone's profound awareness of the fragility of life.

Facing the teahouse master's lifeless corpse, the younger brother hands his head and cries. This weak man, defeated by the Stones of Heaven, sheds heartfelt tears for the man who saved his life.

His strong elder brother, meanwhile, is still being pounded by the waterfall, unfazed by the Stones of Heaven.

Surely his strength will be recognized by the gods, and he will bring his ascetic training to perfect completion.

Still, Kaim finds the tear-stained face of the younger brother beautiful in a way the stronger elder brother's can never be, and he wishes that he himself could be moved like the younger man.

There was an unmatched nobility in the last smile of the teahouse master who gave up his life to save that of a complete stranger. Kaim wishes that he, too, could experience such feelings.

_And what of my own face?_

Living through a thousand years of life is not strength.

Yet, burdened with a life he cannot lose, will Kaim ever be able to change weakness into kindness?

This he cannot tell.

He can only live, unknowing.

He can only walk on.

He can only continue his journey.

Kaim looks at his reflection in the basin of the waterfall.

On the water's heaving surface, he sees the trembling face of a lonely wanderer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Death by coldness is real. It is called Hypothermia. The man also suffers from a severe form of hypothermia, and even with the attempted CPR is not enough for him.


	26. Signpost

"I'll be gone soon," Anri says. "So it makes no difference--a life like this."

She smiles with some effort, puts a gray tablet on her tongue, and swallows it.

Use or possession of this drug by ordinary people is prohibited by law and strictly controlled. The person taking it feels as if every bone in his or her body is melting. All the anxieties and cares of life vanish as the individual wanders in the space between languor and pleasure.

"Why don't you take one, too?"

Anri pulls another tablet from her leather pouch and holds it out to Kaim, who is standing by her bed.

"Coward!' she says with a grim smile when he shakes his head in silence, and then she places the second tablet on her tongue.

"How many pills does that make today?" Kaim asks.

"Hmm, I forgot..."

With empty eyes, Anri stares into space and sighs.

This is an addiction--a serious one.

"How do you feel?" he asks.

"Not bad," she says. "Very happy."

She gives him a smile. It is deeper and softer than her earlier smile--though maybe too deep and too soft. It appears to be a smile of ultimate bliss, but, for that very reason, it also has a frightening quality that sends chills up his spine.

The drug is called "signpost."

This is not its formal designation, of course.

People started calling it that as a secret code word to avoid prosecution, and the term caught on.

"Signpost" is, however, the single most appropriate name for this drug.

Each pill takes the user one step farther down the road. And when withdrawal symptoms strike, the person rushes to take the next pill, thereby advancing yet another step.

Farther and farther and farther...

The road marked by this signpost is a soothing one, entirely free of pain or suffering.

At the end of the road, however, there waits only death.

The use and possession of signpost is so strictly prohibited because it is seen as an invitation to gradual suicide.

"How many more pills, I wonder?"

Anri mutters, stretching her emaciated body full length on the bed.

It is a question that Kaim can not answer. He knows only that she is nearing the end of her signpost journey.

It is for this that Kaim has been called to this hospital, which is a facility for people on the verge of death.

"I have no regrets," Anri says. "None at all. This way I can die pleasantly, quietly, like going to sleep."

Her empty eyes are fixed on Kaim, but they seem to register nothing.

"I'll be fine."

She reaches into the leather pouch again.

"You probably shouldn't do that," Kaim says.

"I'm telling you, I'm fine," she says, laughing weakly, and placing a third signpost in her mouth.

She closes her eyes.

Her sunken eye sockets harbor dark shadows.

Kaim settles himself into the chair by her bed.

He waits for her to say more, but she seems to have fallen asleep.

Her breathing is calm, and a slight smile plays upon her sleeping face. The signpost seems to be working. Without the drug, hammer-like pains in her back and violent chills would prevent her from sleeping. Even worse than the physical suffering would be the fear of approaching death.

More a girl than a woman, young Anri was struck by a mortal illness. At the end of her long battle with the disease, the doctor gave up all hope of treating it and prescribed signpost for her instead.

Ordinary people are not allowed to use the drug, but special permission has been given to patients for whom there is no hope of recovery in order to afford them a peaceful death and bring their lives to a quiet close--in other words, to enable them to die without having to deal with regret or despair.

Before Kaim began this work, a doctor explained the effects of the medicine to him, concluding with a smile. "In other words, signpost forgives all the debts the person has built up toward life."

* * *

Anri wakens.

After she has confirmed Kaim's presence at her bedside, she says, "You don't have to worry," and closes her eyes again, smiling.

"I'm fine. I think I can go just like this..."

So, she knows there are other possibilities.

In certain rare cases, signpost can have undesirable side-effects. Sometimes, at the very end, when the person is just beginning to slide into the abyss of death, there can be an attack of nightmares. The patient experiences a literal death agony. Even though signpost has provided such a wonderfully tranquil departure on the persons final journey, every last bit of tranquility can be swept away on the cusp of death.

Worse still, some patients conclude their hallucinatory episode with a frenzied physical outburst. They might have barely enough strength to breathe until, tormented by the nightmares, they lash out violently enough to break the bed or even strangle the caregiver in attendance. Such can be the mysteries of the human body, or, more so, the human heart.

This is why Kaim is here.

He is to stand vigil by Anri's deathbed against the remote possibility that she might be tormented by nightmares and go wild under the influence of signpost's side-effects.

The doctor has supplied him with yet another drug.

It is a poison that will kill the patient instantaneously.

Kaim has been instructed to administer it to Anri as soon as she begins to exhibit strange behavior.

"Believe me, this is a humane measure," the doctor said, "not murder by any means. The face of a patient who has suffered the drug's side-effects is truly grotesque--not something that anyone could stand to look at.

A person's death should never be that excruciating.

This is a final kindness to give the person a quiet, peaceful ending."

Kaim was not entirely convinced by the doctor's rationale. Neither, however, was he able to bring himself to take issue with it.

Now he can only hope that, led by her signpost, Anri will be able to pass her final moments in peace.

Some part of her inner self might be paralyzed at the moment, and her empty eyes might never regain their former gleam, but if she is happy that way, it is nothing that anyone has the right to deny her.

Waking again, Anri reaches for another signpost but drops the leather pouch.

"Sorry, but...would you pick it up for me?" she asks Kaim.

She no longer has the strength even to hold the pouch.

Her final moments are closing in.

Kaim lifts the pouch from the floor, but when she asks him to put a tablet in her mouth, he hesitates for a moment before complying.

Her tongue is dry and rough as sandpaper. She really must be nearing the end.

Having taken another signpost, Anri seems to be overtaken by that languorous feeling again. She moves the flesh of her cheeks in a way that has no meaning, releases a feeble sigh and says, "I was just dreaming."

"What about?"

"About when I was little...everybody was there...my father, my mother, my big brother and sister...all smiling."

This is not a good sign. The drug might be having a bad effect.

If the signpost is working properly, she should not be dreaming--especially about her family. The lingering attachment or regret or sadness a person retains, the more likely he or she is to experience side effects. This is precisely why the family is never admitted to the patient's room. The final farewells are made before the administering of signpost, and only after everything is finished do they "meet" again.

"Everybody was in such a good mood!"

Kaim wonders if he should give her another signpost.

"I'm sure when I was born that my parents never imagined I would die so young."

A more seasoned caregiver would probably give her another pill without hesitation. Then Anri would fall into another peaceful sleep without any thoughts to disturb her, perhaps never to wake again.

Kaim, however, sets the leather pouch of a shelf and waits to hear what else she has to say.

Anri herself does not request another signpost but moves the sunken flesh of her cheeks again.

This time the movement takes the form of a deliberate smile.

"You know," she says to Kaim, "I'm beginning to wonder."

"About what?"

"Why I was ever born."

Kaim is at a loss for words, but she does not let this prevent her from continuing.

"I mean, if I'm going to die so young, when I've never had a chance to fall in love, wouldn't it have been better if I'd never been born at all?"

Kaim nods as if to tell her that he understands.

_Why I was ever born?_

This is the question that Kaim himself has been pondering all through his endless journey.

He has still not found the answer, and maybe never will.

"My mother and father will be sad, I'm sure."

"You had better rest now."

"Maybe I was born to make my parents sad."

"Close your eyes and take a few long, deep breaths."

"Can I have some more medicine?"

This time he gives it to her without hesitation.

"Thank you," she says simply for the first time, and closes her eyes. "I guess it's possible I might never wake up again."

"It's possible."

"It's a good thing to die without suffering, isn't it?"

"It probably is."

"And to die with your head in a fog, without thinking or feeling anything...that's a good thing, too, isn't it?"

Kaim says nothing.

This is a question he cannot answer, a question he doesn't want to answer.

Anri falls asleep without asking him anything else.

She is still sound asleep when the doctor examines her and tells Kaim, "She will probably pass away before the night is out."

* * *

It is late that night--close to dawn--when Anri begins to suffer.

"I'm sorry, Mommy, I'm sorry I ate the jam. It was me."

She is running a high fever with large drops of sweat on her forehead as she moans deliriously.

"What's taking you so long, Daddy? Hurry, hurry, the butterfly's going to fly away!"

Kaim wonders if she could be reliving memories of early childhood.

"You hit me! Big brothers shouldn't hit their little sisters! You're bad! I'm gonna tell Mommy!"

Convulsions wrack her entire body.

"Let me in! I want to play with the big girls!"

It doesn't end with her delirium.

She starts moving her arms as if trying to embrace family members floating above her.

This is what they were afraid of: the side effects.

"Take me with you, please! I don't want to stay here! Don't leave me!"

Her cries mingle with tears. Hallucinations seem to have taken the place of past memories in her empty eyes.

"Please, I'll be good! I'll do what you tell me, Mommy and Daddy! Take me with you!"

in fact, just the opposite is happening:

the ones being left behind are the family who so loved their youngest daughter, Anri.

"Don't leave me alone! Mommy! Daddy! Come back, please!"

He can feel her pain and sorrow.

Her convulsions become increasingly violent. Her face contorts in agony.

Alerted by the commotion, a doctor comes charging into the room.

"What are you doing?" he shouts at Kaim. "Put her out of her misery now!"

Kaim knows what he should do.

This is what he was hired for. The poison that will prevent Anri from suffering any more is within easy reach.

What he takes hold of, softly, however, is not the poison but the hands that Anri stretches out into empty space.

"What are you doing?" the doctor shouts at him. "Stop it! This is in direct violation of your duties! You're fired!"

Kaim turns toward the fuming doctor and says simply, "Be quiet, please."

"What in the hell are you--"

But the doctor breaks off his shouting when he catches sight of the look on Anri's face.

She is smiling.

"Are these my mother's hands? My father's? Big brother's? Big sister's? Tell me, whose hands are these?" she asks joyfully.

Feeling the strength of Kaim's grasp, she squeezes back, an almost indescribably happy smile on her face, tears streaming from her eyes.

"I'm here with all of you...together...always..."

Her convulsions have subsided, and her breathing has calmed down.

Kaim whispers in her ear, "Thank you, Anri."

"Daddy?"

Smiling through her tears, she says, "I know it's you!"

Kaim smiles back at her and says, "I'm speaking for all of us--for me, your mother, your brother, your sister, when I say 'Thank you, Anri.'"

Anri seems almost embarrassed when she asks, "For what?"

"For having been born, Anri. For having come to be with us. For having allowed us to share time with you. Mommy and I and Brother and Sister, we're all so grateful to you for that."

Unfortunately, life has its limits. There are long lives and short lives.

And in life--even more unfortunately--there is happiness and unhappiness.

There are happy lives and unhappy lives.

For all of this, however, for the chance to be alive in the world, for the chance of having lived life in this world, the only thing to say is

"Thank you."

When Kaim says this to her, Anri gives her slender chin a little shake and says,

"No, I should be the one to be thanking you--all of you!"

These are Anri's last words.

The look on her face in death following the torment of the drug-induced nightmares is neither tranquil nor peaceful.

It is, however, happy.

* * *

"Are you really leaving us?" the doctor asks Kaim with a genuine show of regret.

Dressed for the road, Kaim smiles and says, "I don't think I'll ever be able to perform the duties of a caregiver properly."

"To tell you the truth Kaim, I still can't get over the fact that it's even possible to do it your way."

With a serious look, he adds, "I wonder if your hands give off some substance like signpost. Otherwise, I can't imagine how she could have died so happily."

Kaim turns his palms toward the doctor. "They're just ordinary hands, nothing special."

"I'm not so sure about that," the doctor says. "If we spent some time studying them properly, maybe..."

Kaim shakes his head with a sour smile as if to say "You wouldn't find a thing."

He does have one point to make with the doctor:

"I've seen lots of people die alone--probably a lot more than any of you doctors have. That's why I wanted to bring her together with her family at the end. That's the only reason I took her hands."

The doctor's vague nod suggests that he is not convinced, but Kaim is through talking with him.

He strides off toward the highway.

He must continue his journey.

His journey will go on as long as he is unable to reply to Anri's question.

_Why was I ever born?_

Anri has a family at least. Her life consisted of her joining and leaving her family.

Kaim has not had even that much.

Where did I come from?

Where am I going?

Why does the passing wind draw Kaim along on his endless journey?

A journey without signposts.

This is why Kaim is always free--and always alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: The act of Euthanasia is a widely debated practice, an action where experts are divided into differing opinions. Although the acts of delivering mercy kills to people, it is given a polarizing treatment due to the fact that doctors or caregivers are to kill their assigned people to "put them out of their misery." Some people object the act while others support and even advocate for euthanasia. Reasons vary from individual and it can range from intellectual to religious to even nonsensical responses.
> 
> This is not to support or oppose Euthanasia, but to know what it is by its basic definition and backed with the tale in it. If you want to know more of Euthanasia as well as delving into topics pertaining to the subject, you are free to take time having research of it.


	27. Beyond the Wall

The wall is being demolished.

Sledgehammers resound on both sides.

The wall marked the national border for decades--until yesterday. "Border" might not be the right word, however. Originally, both sides were part of a single nation. The country became divided owing to differences in ideology, and the two sides remained so mutually antagonistic that a high, thick wall had to be built.

Those days are gone now.

A year ago, the leaders of the two sides shook hands in a historic reconciliation.

Today, after much preparation and coordination, the wall that symbolized the two sides' antagonism is being demolished. The sound of hammering signals the end of opposition and extols the beginning of peace.

"C'mon, give me a break!" says Yuguno, spitting on the ground and glaring at the backs of the people swarming at the wall.

"Look at them, smiling like idiots. I can't believe it!"

He glances at Kaim by his side as if to say, "Right?"

His still-boyish face wears a scowl of disgust.

"Tell me, Kaim, you've been to a lot of different countries and seen all kinds of people. Can people just take years of hatred like that and throw it out the window?"

Kaim gives him a sour smile instead of replying.

Yuguno is a young man, the first person that Kaim became friends with shortly after he arrived in this border town. He is pleasant enough except for his stubborn hatred of people from the "other side."

"One lousy handshake and I'm out of a job. I mean really, give me a break."

Yuguno used to be a border guard--in other words, one of the men assigned to keep watch on the wall. He had volunteered, eager to kill anyone who dared to come over the wall from the other side. If his superiors had permitted it, he would have gladly crossed over and attacked the other side rather than waiting to fend off an invasion.

As a mandatory part of the reconciliation, however, the border guards were disbanded. Unlike his brothers in arms, who quickly started new lives for themselves, Yuguno was left behind by the changing times.

"Tell me, Kaim, can people be allowed to just slough off their resentments so easily? Do they just not give a damn?"

Kaim does not respond to this.

He knows that Yuguno is a victim of the age of confrontation.

* * *

* * *

Still just a young man--a boy, even--Yuguno has been thoroughly conditioned since childhood to view the other side as the enemy.

Watch out--the other side could attack at any time.

Watch out--the other side are all cruel, cold-hearted villains.

Watch out--if other side ever invaded us and occupied our towns, they'd burn down our houses, steal our property, kill our men, and assault our women.

Watch out--the day is not far off when they will be invading us. It could be three days from now, or it could be tomorrow. They might be climbing the wall today. This very moment.

Watch out--they've already sent their spies among us. And you can tell for sure who they are. They're the ones who extol and sympathize with the other side by word and by deed.

Watch out--they're probing for the slightest gaps in our psychological armor. Remain alert. Be ready to draw your sword at any moment.

Watch out, Watch out, Watch out, Watch out.

There was much to be found out about the other side in the history books distributed in the schools on this side. The pictures of the people from the other side portrayed them all as ferocious demons.

* * *

* * *

"I'm not the only one, you know. All of us were taught the same thing. So how come everybody but me is so happy about the wall coming down?" Yuguno asks, looking utterly bewildered by these new developments.

Again and again he repeats his disbelief.

Finally, Kaim cannot help but respond to him.

"You were too pure," he says.

"What?"

"It's not your fault, Yuguno. It's the ones who filled your pure, honest heart with hatred."

"Wait a second now, Kaim. The animals who live on the other side of the wall are the ones who did that to me, the horrible things they do..."

Kaim cuts him short. "Have they ever done anything horrible to _you_?"

"Well sure, no, not really to me, but..."

"Just what is it you hate the other side _for_?"

"Well, you see..."

Yuguno is momentarily at a loss for words until all he can do is raise his voice and blurt out, "It's true, though. The whole bunch of them are just horrible people!"

He folds his arms in a decided pout.

"How are they horrible? What did you ever see any of them do? When? Where?"

Yuguno stammers and sputters.

"Have you ever even _met_ somebody from over there?" Kaim demands to know.

Yuguno hangs his head and shakes it from side to side.

With a grim smile, Kaim says, "Well, I _have_. And they're not devils or demons or anything of the sort. How could they be? You all used to be part of the same country! But that stuff is beside the point anyway--countries and races and tribes. You're all human beings. You're all the same."

Yuguno stays silent, hanging his head.

* * *

Cheers erupt at the wall.

The wall that has separated the two worlds for decades has just now been broken through.

Representatives from this side and the other side walk through the opening, greet each other with smiles and firm handshakes, and embrace.

The cheers grow louder, and people--mostly members of the younger generation--gather in circles here and there, expressing their joy.

Yuguno glares down at his own shadow and asks Kaim. "So, what should I do now? All I've ever done is hate. All I've ever known how to do is hate them."

Kaim gives Yuguno a pat on the shoulder and says, "It's not too late to change. You can start now."

"Can I?"

"You can, I'm sure of it."

Kaim is sure because he knows what it was like when both sides were a single country. It was a kindly nation. By no means rich, it was yet a happy country of compassionate people.

"I'm telling you, Yuguno, people can change."

"If you say so..."

"Look over there, Yuguno. Look at those people enjoying themselves."

Hesitantly, Yuguno raises his head. Around the wall a celebration is beginning. Young people are dancing, singing, toasting each other, engaging in conversation, and all of them used to be companions of Yuguno's who received the same education he did. No doubt the young people on the other side were similarly educated to hate.

"What do you see over there? Demons? Devils?"

Yuguno shakes his head and lets the tightness go out of his shoulders.

"I'm beginning to wonder, Kaim, why until now I've been so..."

Kaim pats him on the shoulder again to signal that he understands.

"People can change," he says. "They can change from hating to loving--and from loving to hating."

Yes, Kaim knows about that as well. He saw how such a wonderfully unified country was divided in two at the end of a violent civil war.

"Don't change anymore," Kaim says, not just to Yuguno but to all the smiling young people.

A young girl hesitantly approaches Yuguno.

She is from the other side. She holds a plate full of cookies.

"Have some if you'd like," she says. "I baked them this morning."

The cookies are heart-shaped.

Urged on by the smiling Kaim, Yuguno reaches out for a cookie, his face bright red.

"Thanks." he says shyly and takes a bite of his cookie.

"Good?" she asks.

Yuguno turns a deeper shade of red and says, "Delicious!"

White birds cut across the blue sky--

from the other side to this side,

from this side to the other.

The white birds sail through the sky almost joyfully, as if to tell the people below,

_In the beginning, there were no borders!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: For more information, try read the factual historical documents and articles about the Berlin Wall.


	28. A Chorus of Cicadas

This forest is home to a priceless treasure.

A marvelous--and exceedingly rare--creature lives here.

You could search the entire continent and never find another such habitat.

"Of course, the value of our 'treasure' is not apparent at first glance."

The village elder holds a cup of liquor made from fermented berries as he speaks. His ancestors have kept watch over this tiny village for generations.

It is summer, and the massed cries of a million cicadas pour down upon the small fort that guards the entrance to the village. The chorus of insects sounds like a steady rain.

"I wonder if you gentlemen understand what I mean?"

The elder scans the dozen or so powerfully-built men gathered at the fort.

All of them wear a puzzlement. All but one, that is.

"You said your name is Kaim?" asks one of the villagers. "You seem to know what he's talking about."

Kaim nods and points upward.

"It's the cicadas." he says.

A stir goes through the villagers. With a delighted smile, the elder says, "So you know, do you?"

Far from delighted, the men in armor share suspicious glances.

All are mercenaries.

They have been hired by the villagers to protect the forest's "treasure."

"Hey, hey, wait just a second there," rumbles the voice of one soldier, perhaps emboldened by the liquor.

"Are you telling me this 'treasure' we're supposed to protect is just cicadas? What's so special about them? They're everywhere."

"That is true," says the elder. "Which is why I said the value of our 'treasure' is not obvious at first glance."

"They sound just like any cicadas I've ever heard."

Another of the mercenaries says, with a look of amazement. "Yeah, how is this 'chorus of cicadas' different from any other? They sound just like the ones in my home town."

The other soldiers laugh in agreement.

"Absolutely," says one.

"No difference," says another.

The elder and the villagers, however, are not amused.

They turn to Kaim as the elder asks him, "Will you help us to protect our 'treasure'?"

"This is what I'm here to do." he replies.

"Tell me again, Kaim. Do you really know the meaning of the 'treasure' of this forest?"

"I do..."

"Then let me ask you this. Do you know when this summer's battle will bear fruit?"

Kaim takes a sip of his liquor, releases a long, slow breath, and says, "In 75 years. We're fighting for the summer 75 years from now. Is that what you mean?"

Another stir goes through the group of villagers.

The elder, with a great look of satisfaction, nods deeply and refills Kaim's cup.

To the stunned mercenaries, the elder says, "We have protected our cicada chorus generation after generation.

The ones who made it possible for us to hear this summer's chorus--listen, it sounds like pouring rain!--are the villagers who were grown-up men 75 years ago when I was just a boy.

The chorus that shook the forest last summer was protected 76 years ago, and the next summer the cicadas protected 74 years ago will start singing together. This is how we have protected the forest cicadas over the years.

Do you gentlemen now see how much it means to us?"

It is a matter of simple arithmetic.

After the eggs are buried in the ground, the cicadas that live in the forest spend 75 long years in the larval stage. At last, in the summer of their 75th year, they become mature insects, come out of the ground, and sing like mad in the treetops for the short week or two they remain alive.

Just before they die, they come down from the trees, mate, and bury their eggs in the ground. The new crop of eggs then spend another 75 long years in the earth...

"The fact that we can hear the cicada chorus this summer means only one thing: that the forest was at peace 75 years ago. Similarly, if the forest remains at peace this summer, the villagers will be able to hear the chorus 75 years from now. We have used what little money we have to pay you gentlemen to assemble here for this: to make the forest resound with the cicada chorus in 75 years."

All the mercenaries but Kaim openly show their disappointment.

"Wait just a second now, grandpa," says one soldier standing ramrod straight. "You mean to say we're supposed to risk our lives to protect a bunch of bugs?"

"Exactly."

"And even supposing we succeed in what we risk our lives for now, the results won't show up for 75 years?"

"That is precisely what I mean."

"Come on, old man, you must be kidding. If it were money or valuables, that would be one thing, but we might lose our lives here. And for what? Bugs?"

"Well, you _are_ mercenaries, after all."

"Okay now, grandpa. I'm going to ask you one last time. I know this village is poor and I know you people have had to scrimp and save to put this money together. There's not question about that. But when you say this is for bugs...for 75 years from now, you're not living in the same world I'm living in. For something like that, you're willing to spend every last bit of money you've got and, in the bargain, get us to gamble our lives?

Are you insane?"

"We want the children 75 years from now to hear the cicada chorus for themselves. What's so strange about that? Now _we_ are having trouble understanding _you_."

"Don't toy with me, old man! I can't take a job like that!" the man shouts and storms out of the fort. Some of the other mercenaries call out to him, "Hey, wait for me!" "I'm coming with you!" "Risk our lives for bugs? What a rotten deal that is!" and they hurry after him. One man after another disappears with a parting remark. "I'm keeping my advance, though," several of them add.

The only fighter left in the fort is Kaim.

* * *

The "downpour" of cicada cries continues unabated.

The whole forest sounds like one gigantic creature.

One young man is working the lookout post at the fort in place of the departed mercenaries.

He asks Kaim, "Are you all right with this?"

"I'm fine. I knew what I was getting myself into."

"I heard after they left...those men are a bad bunch."

"It's true. They're really in it for what they can get _after_ the job is done."

They're fine until they finish protecting the village from the enemy. Then they start asking for "bonuses." They grab valuables and harass villagers: "We saved the village for you, right? It wouldn't hurt you to give us a little extra," they say. The reason this year's mercenaries quit is because they realized there was no hope of any bonuses out of _this_ village.

"Why did you stay, Kaim?" the young man asks him. "There must have been a lot of jobs that would have paid you more."

"I just thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to risk my life for something 75 years in the future for a change. That's all."

The young man nods his head thoughtfully. Then he tells Kaim one of the old stories of the village.

"Long, long ago, way before I was born, when the elder was still a boy, there was a summer when the cicadas didn't sing at all. Of course, this means that, 75 years before that, there was a battle that ravaged the forest. The elder says that the summer forest without the cicada chorus was so sad and lonely it was horrifying: it actually gave him the chills. The trees themselves were alive, but if felt as if the whole forest had died. Sitting alone in the silent forest, he felt so lonely he wanted to cry. And, worse, he felt intense anger toward our ancestors for not having protected the forest 75 years earlier. The elder tells this story whenever he's had a little too much to drink."

Kaim nods in silence.

"I know all about that," he almost lets himself say, but he swallows his words and smiles instead.

The young man goes on, "So anyhow, when the elder was sitting and crying in the forest, he says, a traveler came along. A young man. Big and strong--a man like you, Kaim. And he said to the elder, 'Don't ever forget how sad and lonely you are today. When you grow up, make sure you never let the children who will come 75 years after you feel this way.' The elder says he doesn't remember the man's face, but he will never forget his words. He tells his story to the young people of the village over and over."

Kaim nods again, saying nothing, but the skin of his back seems to creep beneath his shirt.

"All these years, the elder has kept the promise he made to the traveler. No matter how much the merchants might have pressed him, he has never let them do anything that will ruin the forest. He has kept on good terms with the neighboring villages to avoid making enemies. He has sometimes entered into dealings that were not to our advantage and lost many chances for us to make money. This is why the village is still so poor.""

The young man gives a self-deprecating chuckle. "Still, not one person in the village resents the elder for what he has done. The village kids have always gone into the forest to 'bathe' themselves in the shower of the cicada chorus. That's just how we grew up: we took it for granted. We all feel nothing but gratitude toward the elder--and all the ancestors who came before him--who have enabled us to hear the cicada chorus every year."

Kaim says nothing in reply, but he begins to savor the creeping feeling across his back.

He brings to mind he face of that young boy he met so long ago--more than eighty years ago.

"Why aren't the cicadas singing?" the boy sobbed. "Why is there not even on cicada this year? Why did our ancestors burn down the forest back then?" But he had a gleam in his eye, and that same gleam, hidden by wrinkles, still resides in the eyes of the elder. Passed down from one generation to the next, it is there in the eyes of the young man guarding the fort with Kaim.

This is the very reason that Kaim is here.

Now the village, which has kept the peace for so many years, is about to be attacked. The neighboring country is expanding its power. Its army has violated the border and is heading this way.

The prospects for victory are slim.

The elder says, "If you can get us through the summer, that is all we need. All we ask is that you help us prevent them from devastating the forest until the cicadas have planted their eggs."

The neighboring country is not likely to show much interest in this poor village, which is merely a pathway for the army marching toward the city beyond the forest. If the village can hold out until the end of summer and surrender with the coming of fall, the enemy will probably charge straight through the forest and head for the city.

The elder says, "Abd when, after a nice little visit, they leave us, we'll have to offer them a parting gift. They can have this worn-out old head of mine."

Laughing, he mimes cutting his own head off.

The elder has transcended any unseemly attachment to the world. He has lived a full life. Now all he wants to do with his remaining time is to give the children 75 years in the future the chance to hear the cicadas.

"Tell me one thing," Kaim says to the young man, bringing his sword closer to hand.

"What's that?"

"When you're a grown-up, will you be able to bet your life on a future that is still 75 years away?"

"I will," he replies without the slightest hesitation. "We can't see the joyful faces of children 75 years from now, but I do know that the forest has to be filled with the crying of the cicadas every summer, whether now or next year or 75 years from now or even beyond that. That's what they call the grownups' responsibility. And I'm not the only one who believes this: all the young people of the village do."

"The elder has raised some damn good young people, I see."

"What's that? Did you say something?"

"No, nothing at all."

Kaim holds himself in readiness, staring straight ahead.

Dust clouds well up on the horizon. An enemy unit seems to be approaching.

The cicadas cry without ceasing.

The enemy is coming.

"All right. It's time."

Kaim heads out to battle.

The cicada chorus reverberates endlessly as if playing the song of life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Nature being burned away is one of the harsh realities of war. In war, no one stops to think in appreciating nature, for all they were thinking is how to win, and how to kill. Some of the battles even take place in forests and plains, where the plants will be crushed and pushed aside while its native animals will flee. Even after battles have ended, the landscape is permanently changed and scarred, either by the physical evidence (altered soil, scattered abandoned weaponry and traps) to psychological and even spiritual (ghosts haunting the place, altered and reformed culture).


	29. Return of the Native

The mother stands by the island pier, waiting for her son.

Her luggage is bigger than she is. Dressed in her finest traveling clothes, she seems hardly able to contain her excitement as she speaks to Kaim, who happens to be waiting for the same boat to arrive.

"I got a letter from him," she says.

Almost thirty years have passed since her only son left the island of his birth. There was no word from him in all that time until he recently wrote announcing his successes and his plan to bring her to the mainland.

"I've been alone ever since I lost my husband, so just to think I might be able to spend the rest of my life with my son, his wife and my grandchildren..."

She sold the house she had always lived in and has been waiting for her son to come for her.

The letter arrived over a week ago.

"I wonder why it's taking him so long. The seas are calm."

Kaim arrived here on yesterday's ferry.

"You mean he's late?" Kaim asks with some surprise.

"Very," she replies, forcing a smile. "I wonder what's wrong. Maybe he got busy all of a sudden and can't pull himself away from his work."

"He hasn't written again to explain?"

"He's never bothered with things like that, not since he was a child," she says, straining to smile again and glancing toward the horizon.

No bigger than a dot at first, the boat is now big enough for a clear view of the mast in silhouette.

"Anyhow, I'm not worried. I know he'll be on this boat," she says, raising herself from the dockside crate on which she is sitting and waving a handkerchief toward the approaching vessel.

Kaim also stares hard at the boat, which gives his eyes a stern expression.

"Young man?"

At the sound of the mothers voice, Kaim hastens to soften his gaze before turning toward her.

"You are a traveler, aren't you?"

"That's right," he says.

"I saw you arrive on yesterday's ferry. Are you leaving so soon?"

She is obviously curious about this stranger, but her face shows no wariness toward outsiders.

Relieved to see this, Kaim replies, "I'm doing the same thing you are--waiting for someone to arrive."

"On this boat?"

"Yes, probably."

"You haven't been in touch with the person?"

"No, we haven't agreed on a time. I might be waiting for nothing, too."

"Oh, really?"

Kaim evades further questioning with a strained smile.

This is not something he can discuss with just anyone.

He is on a secret mission--one that must not fail.

The woman still wears a look of puzzlement, but their conversation is swallowed up in the general hubbub on shore, accompanying the approach of the boat.

At last the ferry arrives.

One by one the passengers alight after their half-day trip from the capital on the mainland.

Clutching the handkerchief to her breast, the mother scans each of them.

There are peddlers who travel from island to island hawking their wares, and men who have come to do larger-scale trading; sunburned young men and women who arrive form the mainland in groups to work on the island's farms, and men coming home to the island after a season of labor on the mainland.

None of the dozens of passengers, however, is the woman's son.

Once it has disgorged its island-bound passengers, the ferry takes on people crossing to the mainland. Greeters on the pier give way to well-wishers.

The mother turns her back on the pier's hustle and bustle and plods her way toward the town. She hoists a heavy pack onto her back and lifts a large suitcase in each hand, but she has taken only a few steps when the pack begins to slide off.

Kaim reaches out to keep it from falling.

The woman turns with a look of surprise, and when she realizes that Kaim is alone, she asks.

"So your person didn't come, either?"

"Looks that way."

With only one ferry a day from the mainland, all they can do is wait until tomorrow.

"Are you going to stay on the island until your friend comes?"

"I might have to..."

"You could run up quite a hotel bill that way."

"I'm all right. I'm used to camping out."

"Camping out?" she exclaims with a look of amazement. Then she smiles and says, "Oh, well, you're young, and in good condition. A few days sleeping outdoors shouldn't be too hard on you."

"What are you going to do, Ma'am? Go back home?"

"I wish I could. I sold my house last week. I was so sure my son would come get me right away."

A hint of discouragement clouds her face, but she quickly recovers her smile and continues,

"The money I got for the house is a nice little bundle, so I've decided to spend freely for a change. See that large hotel over there? I'm staying in their biggest room and taking it easy all day and all night, too. I'm disappointed when he doesn't show up, of course, but I've worked my fingers to the bone all these years. It won't hurt for me to indulge myself just this little bit."

Though delivered with a smile, her words touch Kaim deeply.

In her case, "Worked my fingers to the bone" is not just a figure of speech, as evidenced by her suntanned face, which is so unsuited to the cosmetics she has applied to greet her son, and especially by her bony fingers, so ill-concealed by the cheap rings she is wearing.

Hard as she undoubtedly worked, life has granted her few rewards. There is nothing expensive about her luggage.

"I'm sure your son will be here tomorrow," Kaim says.

Her deeply wrinkled face breaks into a joyous smile.

"Yes, of course, tomorrow for sure, she says with a deep nod.

"I hope the person you are waiting for comes on tomorrow's boat, too."

"Thank you very much," he replies.

"I have an idea," she says. "You might get sick camping out. If you'd like, why not stay in my hotel? I'm sure we could arrange something for one extra person."

Kaim senses that she is not suggesting this out of mere politeness, which is precisely why he demurs with a smile and a nod.

"Thanks just the same," he says, "but don't worry about me. Just take the rest you deserve after all your long years of hard work."

"If you say so..." She seems somewhat disappointed but does not press him to accept.

As he watches her trudge off toward her hotel alone, all but hidden from view by her huge bundles, Kaim wonders if, perhaps, she was hoping that his company might ease her concern that her son might not show up after all.

Even so, he decides not to chase after her and retract his refusal. He is the wrong man to spend time with a mother whose only dream is to have a happy old age.

Most likely, when tomorrow's boat arrives, she will finally be reunited with the son she has longed to see all these years.

The person that Kaim is waiting for will also almost certainly cross over to the island tomorrow.

The mother will undoubtedly shed great tears when her reunion takes place.

Kaim, on the other hand, has a bloody job to perform when he encounters the man he's waiting for.

Kaim has been hunting him. The man is a fugitive, and there is a reward on his head.

He is known as the boss of an underworld gang in the capital, and he has committed crimes without number--robbery, fraud, extortion, assault, and even murder. To cap his life of crime, he double-crossed his own gang and ran off with a great deal of money. Word reached the gang only a few days ago that the man is headed for this island, the place of his birth, and they hired Kaim to take care of him.

The fact that they hired Kaim means they are ready to have him killed on sight.

* * *

Kaim and the mother meet at the dock again the next day at the same time.

And again the next day,

and the next,

and the day after that.

The ones they are waiting for never come.

A week goes by.

The mother switches accommodations from her expensive hotel to a cheap inn frequented by traveling peddlers.

"Actually, I'm more comfortable in a cheap place like this." she tells Kaim with a laugh, but more than likely her money would have run out in the first hotel.

"Your person is very late, too," she observes.

"True..."

"Who is it?"

He sidesteps the issue with a strained smile.

He cannot answer her question if he is going to carry out his duty.

And besides, he feels a tiny premonition deep inside.

The mother stops questioning him and says, "I hope your person comes soon."

* * *

Another three days go by.

A messenger from the gang, disguised as a peddler, whispers to Kaim as he steps off the ferry.

"We think he's still hiding in the capital. We're looking in every rat hole we can find, but there's no sigh of him."

Kaim nods silently and glances at the boat.

Even after the last passenger alights, the mother stands on the pier, looking up at the boat's empty deck.

* * *

"Let me ask you, young man..." the mother says to Kaim three days later. "Does the place where you're camping out have a roof to keep the dew off?"

Kaim has been sleeping in a dilapidated old house he found near the harbor.

"All I need is a place to sleep," she says, "Would you mind if I joined you there?"

"What's that?"

"The place I'm staying now is not much better than a ruin. I'm sure I'd be fine wherever you're staring. Yes, I'm sure I'd be fine."

She smiles like a child who has found a new source of mischief.

Kaim does not refuse her.

More precisely, he cannot refuse her.

She has probably run out of money even to stay in her current flophouse.

Kaim has noticed her cheap rings gradually disappearing from her bony fingers.

* * *

As they pass the night in the abandoned building, the moon their only source of light, the mother, without prompting from Kaim, spills out her memories of her son.

They are by no means pleasant memories. Known as a roughneck even from his earliest years, the boy was hated by all the neighbors and caused his parents a good deal of shame.

"He would steal our money, stay out all night partying, and before we knew it he was the number one thug on the island. He was always getting into fights and bothering girls. During the island's annual festival he would go wild and destroy property, so my husband and I would have to go around apologizing to everyone."

The father, a skilled stonemason, lost his job when the son stole valuables from the boss's house.

The mother could hardly walk down the street without being subjected to the glares and finger-pointing of the neighbors. Things got especially bad after her son set fire to the island assembly hall just for fun.

_His parents raised him badly, the boy's misbehavior is the parents' responsibility, the son has became such as thug because his mother spoiled him rotten. It's the parents' fault, the father's fault, the mother's fault, your fault._

They had heard it all.

"It was so hard for us on a little island like this! There was no place we could hide."

The boy was eighteen when he finally ran away from home-- or, rather, left the island when his parents all but disowned him.

The other islanders rejoiced as if a plague had lifted. One man went so far as to deliberately let the parents overhear him declaring, "I hope that bastard goes to the capital and dies in the gutter." 

The boy's father died five years ago.

To the very end, he would not forgive his son, and in his final delirium, he was still apologizing to the islanders.

"But still, to a mother, any son is the baby she once carried. I never heard a word from him, but I went on praying that he would stay healthy in the capital, that he wouldn't catch whatever epidemic was going around, that he wouldn't get into fights. But that's just me, I guess."

She gives Kaim a bitter smile.

"Or maybe it's just me being a mother," she adds.

"You have parents, too, I suppose? Of course you do! Everyone has parents!"

"Ture."

"Are your father and mother alive and well?"

Kaim bows his head in silence.

On a journey with no clear beginning and no definable end, Kaim us unable to answer a question like this.

Instead, he asks the woman, "What is the first thing you'll say when you finally get to meet your son?"

"Good question," says the mother. After thinking it over a few moments, she replies, "I won't actually _say_ anything. I think I'll just hug him and say nothing at all. I'll hold him tight and let him know how glad I am that he's alive and well."

"Just supposing, though," Kaim presses her gently, "If you knew that he had lived a less than exemplary life in the capital, too, would you still give him a hug?"

Her response is instantaneous.

"First I'd hug him, and then I'd give him a good talking to!" She smiles shyly at Kaim and adds, "That's what being a parent is all about."

* * *

The next morning she runs a high fever. She may have survived the dew, but a new in the dilapidated building has taken a toll on the old woman's health.

Even so, when it is time for the ferry to arrive, she struggles to her feet and heads toward the pier with uncertain steps.

Alarmed, Kaim holds her back.

"You're in no shape to be going out," he says.

Despite his attempts to bring down her fever with cool spring water from the forest, it is as high as ever Her labored breathing has taken on a congested rumbling.

"I have to go," she insists. "My son is coming for me. I'm going to see him..."

She sweeps away Kaim's restraining hand, but the effort causes her to lose her balance and sink to her knees.

"If he's on board, I'll bring him here," Kaim assures her. "Tell me how I can recognize him."

Cradled in Kaim's arms, half-delirious with fever, the old woman mutters, "On his left cheek... before he left the island... he got in a fight... somebody cut him... he has a scar..."

Kaim nods and lowers the old woman to a straw mat spread on the ground.

He fights back a sigh and closes his eyes momentarily, then he stares hard through a small window at the ferry dock.

His suspicious were right after all, though he was sure of it last night.

Kaim was given a written description of the man when he took on the assignment from the gang.

There could be no doubt: "Scar on left cheek."

The ferry is approaching the harbor.

The pier is showing signs of activity.

Kaim starts for the door.

Behind him, he hears the woman saying,

"Please... don't kill him... don't kill my boy..."

Kaim stops short, but instead of turning around, he bites his lip.

"I don't know what he did... in the capital... but don't kill him... please..."

So she knows, too.

She knows everything.

"If you have to kill him... if you absolutely have to... please, before you do it... let me just..."

Kaim leaves the ruin in silence.

His steps are uncertain as he makes his way in the blinding glare of the afternoon sun.

* * *

This time the man is there.

Trying to lose himself among the traveling peddlers, the man with the price on his head and the scar on his left cheek steps down to the pier.

He is far more emaciated than Kaim's written description would have led him to believe. No doubt he is exhausted from his years as a fugitive. Still, he has fulfilled his promise to his mother by coming back to the island of his birth.

His eyes dart fearfully over the pier.

His expression changes from that of a man searching for someone to the panicked look of a child who has become separated from his parent.

Kaim slowly plants himself in front of him.

The man knows nothing of Kaim's mission, of course, and has never met him before.

But he has the instincts of an inhabitant of the back alleys. His face freezes, and he turns to flee.

Kaim grabs him by the shoulder--but lightly, in a way that would make an onlooker think he was witnessing the joyful reunion of old friends. The man tries to shake off the hand, to no avail.

It would be easy enough for Kaim to kill him on the spot.

his eyes show that he has no strength left to fight. Kaim has far more experience than the man does at surviving potentially fatal encounters.

The man knows this.

"If you're going to kill me, get it over with," he snarls. "But if you've got a trace of kindness in you, you'll give me one last chance to do something good for my mother. It won't take long. Just let me see her. Once. Then you can do whatever you like with me."

Kaim lets his hand drop from the man's shoulder.

He is not going to run away.

"So, I didn't make it after all..." he says with a forced smile. His face tells Kaim that he has probably resigned himself to his fate. It suggests, too, an air of relief at having finally brought his life as a fugitive to an end.

"How many men have you killed?" he asks Kaim.

"I don't have to answer that."

"And I don't really want you to tell me. It's just that, well, looking at you. I'd say I'm older than you are, and there are some things a person comes to realize when he's lived a long time. Think about the guys you've killed. Every single one of them had parents. Killing a person means killing somebody's child. Right? When that finally dawned on me, I left the gang. Gangs don't pay retirement bonuses, so I sort of 'borrowed' a little money from them and thought I'd use it to... well, I've given my mother a hard time all these years..."

His voice grows thick and muffled. He shakes off the emotion and proclaims with a laugh, "Ah, what the hell! That's a lot of sentimental nonsense. I don't know how many guys I've killed over the years, so I figure I'm getting what I deserve. I can't hate you for what you're doing."

A shout comes from the ferry deck: "We will be departing shortly! All passengers bound for the capital should be boarding now!"

Kaim looks hard at the man and says, "Just tell me one thing."

The man says nothing in reply, but Kaim continues, "What's the first thing you're going to do when you see your mother?"

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

"Never mind, just answer the question."

"I'll say, 'I'm back.' No, I won't say anything. I'll just take her in my arms. That's all."

"Give her a big hug?"

"Sure. That's what parents and children are all about."

Kaim relaxes the grim expression on his face and jerks his chin toward the forest beyond the pier.

"There's an old, broken-down house in the woods. Your mother's waiting for you there. Go to her."

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't ever come back to the capital. And don't stay on this island. Take another ferry and go far away to some other island. With your mother."

The man looks stunned. "You... I mean..."

His voice is trembling.

Kaim says nothing more.

He leaves the man behind and strides toward the boat before it can depart.

* * *

Mission accomplished.

Kaim does not care if, in return for this deed, he is labeled a traitor to be pursued by the gang. The image of his own parents praying for their son's welfare has long since faded from his memory.

"Pulling out! Please hurry!" come the cries of the ferry's crew.

A big gong is ringing. Startled by the sounds reverberating between the vast stretch of ocean and the open sky, brightly -colored birds dart from the forest. Large birds and small birds--parents and their young? The larger birds seem almost to be shielding the smaller ones beneath their slow-beating, outstretched wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am not familiar in the fields and arts of raising a young child, but there are some studies pertaining that juvenile delinquency, as the criminal son experienced a lot during his younger and tender years, has been linked into numerous factors. These factors include parenting styles, parental roles and, as few studies attest, environment. Based on the setting of his original home, it is best to rule out environmental factors to be the cause of his early delinquency years and might be attributed to parental factors, or possibly peer pressure. Since details of his life are minimal, it can be ruled out to either be peer pressure or parental factors of the cause of his nature.
> 
> What do you think, and what are the other theories of his antisocial behavior when he is young?


	30. Lottery of Life

Having kids is like playing the lottery.

That was how the police commissioner put it, with a grim smile and a sigh. He was the man in chare of domestic security.

"Sometimes you pick a winner, and sometimes you pick a loser. Life is like that. You can't control it."

Kaim responded with a silent nod.

Not that he was convinced that you could divide people into "winners" and "losers."

But that was how they did it here in this country that was the size of a city. He had no choice but to recognize it as reality because the man who kept the peace here believed it, and this nation was known for having the best public safety of all the countries in the region.

"Every kid in there is a loser." He spat out, jerking his chin toward the juvenile prison visible from his office window.

Built to hold young criminals, this was the largest--and the most strictly run and most closely guarded--prison to be seen in any of the neighboring coutrnies.

Its treatment of its young inmates was also the harshest.

"You're a foreigner, Kaim, so you may not approve, but we have our own way of doing things."

"I see," Kaim said.

"Losers are losers. There's nothing you can do to make losers into winners. It's never going to happen. Far from it. If you coddle losers, they just turn into bigger losers and give the decent people a lot of trouble. See what I mean?"

"That's one way of looking at things."

Kaim's deliberate irony was lost on the police commissioner.

"No, it's the only way--if you're going to have a safe, powerful country," he declared, "And we'll expect you to abide by this view, too."

Kaim had nothing more to say to him.

If he were to insist on confronting the police commissioner, he might be seen as questioning the authorities, which could land him in the adults' prison. This would be easy enough to bring about for the police commissioner--and indeed for anyone in the city-state who stood on the side of the powers that be.

The commissioner glanced again toward the juvenile prison.

"They built that place eighty years ago," he said. "Which is to say, the very first building they made when the present political system came into being was a prison to throw young offenders into."

Kaim knew this.

For Kaim, whose life went on forever, events of eighty years before could well have happened yesterday.

Eighty years earlier, this country had experienced a coup d'état. The revolutionary government ruled the people under a military dictatorship and jailed every last person suspected of disturbing the peace and order.

The government was especially wary of younger criminals.

"There's a limit to how serious a kid's crimes can be.

But let them get away with those, and the next thing you know they're doing really bad stuff. They might be satisfied with shoplifting at first, but soon they're into burglary, muggings, they start using weapons, and in the end they think nothing of killing people.

You have to nip them in the bud."

The kids sent to prison were fed the absolute minimum to keep them alive. No doctor saw them if they fell sick or were injured. Subjected to such harsh imprisonment, they succumbed one after another, and more than a few of them ended up as cold corpses pitched out the back door.

Whenever one did manage to serve out his term and return to the outside world, he found it impossible to erase the brand of "loser." Children with criminal records were soundly rejected by respectable society. The social system was structured in such a way that nothing worked for them: employment, marriage, even finding a place to live. Expelled b society, these boys and girls returned to crime as a way to stay alive, eventually ending up in adult prison.

With a bitter smile, the police commissioner said to Kaim, "I'm sure this all sounds terrible to an outsider like you."

Kaim answered with a slight nod.

This only served to increase the bitterness of the commissioner's smile.

"I know what you're thinking," he said.

"And to tell you the truth, I sometimes think the system is a little too harsh on them, too.

But you have to realize that we're not just punishing bad kids: we're also holding them up as an example to the good ones. What would _they_ think if they saw the ex-criminals out on the street again walking along like nothing ever happened? They'd figure that even if they got their hands dirty and spent a few years in jail, they could just go back to their old lives, that society's punishment is no big deal, that they can get away with murder. We wouldn't want our kids to be like that, would we? So the only thing is for us grownups to teach them. Look at _those_ guys, we can say. All it takes is one bad deed and your life is over. So you'd better listen to your parents and teacher and be good."

He definitely had a point.

Kaim was willing to grant him that.

But still, the commissioner must have noticed a hint of shadow crossing Kaim's face, and he shifted his tone of voice.

With bureaucratic conviction, he declared, "The authorities have received word that there is going to be a coup. Of course the military have everything under control, so there is nothing to worry about. They could suppress it right now if they wanted to. They could easily attack the agitators and capture the ring leaders of the plot. In this case, though, they have decided to let it get started in order to smoke out every last one of the reactionary elements."

According to the government's intelligence, the uprising was scheduled to occur that very night.

"We are prepared for just about any eventuality, but there is always the possibility of the unexpected. If there were a riot inside the juvenile prison timed to coincide with the rebellion, that could be a real problem."

This is why Kaim had been hired as a temporary prison guard--a bodyguard for the state.

"We're counting on your skills as a season warrior, which is why we're entrusting you with such a major responsibility. Be sure you live up to our expectations. If you have to resort to violence, we have no problem with that. Whatever you do, it will be for the sake of law and order. It will be in order to protect the happy lives of the decent citizens of our nation. Carry out your duties with complete dedication of body and soul."

The commissioner handed Kaim a one-page document.

It was, literally, a license to kill.

"Act without the slightest restraint. All the prison guards have one of these."

"But still..."

"If you hesitate to immpose the ultimate punishment on a single 'loser,' then countless 'winners' among the upstanding citizenry must suffer the consequences. You understand, I'm sure. Once a loser, always a loser. Rather than living with such a burden, they themselves might be happier to have you kill them and get it over with."

Kaim accepted the document from the commissioner without comment.

"That completes our contractual arrangement. Now assume your post."

With a perfectly straight face, the commissioner cautioned Kaim, "Just make sure you don't let any foolish compassion get in your way."

* * *

The season was mid-winter, but Kaim found no hint of fire burning in the juvenile prison. In their tiny solitary cells, the young inmates, wrapped in ragged blankets, lay helplessly in the dark. Painful moaning came from one cell, suggesting its inmate might be running a fever. From another came unbroken shrill mean laughter that could only mean the person's mind had snapped.

"What you see is what you get," said the veteran guard guiding Kaim on his first round of inspection.

"Not one of those faces shows any life. So even if something were to happen, these pitiful creatures couldn't do a damn thing. They're 'losers' all right. They're breathing, but that's about it."

"Is there really no possibility of them being rehabilitated and becoming winners?"

The other guard gave Kaim a momentary blank stare and then said with a laugh and a wave, "No, no, no, none at all."

Eighty years since the revolution, and the change of generations had replaced virtually all the people from that time. Since coming of age, this prison guard, who had no memory of life before the revolution, had been implanted with the idea that people were either "winners" or "losers," and he surely never doubted it.

"They went out of their way to hire you, so it might be a little strange for me to say this, but I'm sure the kids in here are never going to riot, no matter how wild things get on the outside. Splash a little cold water on them, and they'll quiet right down. There's almost none of them you have to worry about."

"Almost?"

"Well, I can't claim that about every single one of them. There are even losers among the losers, unfortunately."

The guard showed Kaim to the end of the hall, and there he opened the lock on a door so thick it could be mistaken for a section of the wall.

"Beyond here are the punishment cells. This is where we throw the incorrigible losers--the ones who have caused trouble on work details, the ones who take a defiant attitude, the ones who show no sign of remorse for their crimes."

Suddenly it was clear to Kaim.

It was clear to him because he had experienced countless battlefields in his life.

The punishment cells were darker and far colder than the regular cells. But from the depths of the darkness--from within each individual cell--there emanated a quiet heat that could not be felt from the regular cells.

The people in here were alive.

They were not simply breathing. They were alive with real passion.

"The crimes that originally got them locked up here were nothing much--a little burglary, some purse-snatching, flashing a knife, stuff like that. If they had just quietly served out their terms, they'd be out now, living obscure lives somewhere."

Instead, they resisted, and kept resisting.

They called for better treatment of inmates. They appealed for an end to discrimination against former prisoners. The number of their "crimes" multiplied, until it became clear they would never get out of there alive.

"They'll just go straight from here to the adult prison when they grow up. It'll be twenty or thirty years before they can breathe the outside air again--if they can live that long, which would be quite an accomplishment."

The guard concluded with a belly-shaking laugh, which was interrupted by a voice echoing from a dark cell.

"Stop that laughing."

It was a quiet but commanding voice, though one that retained a hint of boyishness.

A look of fear crossed the guard's face, though he quickly reverted to a sneer.

"This is the biggest pain we've got," he said. "His name is Diran. They say he was the leader of a gang of juvenile delinquents on the outside, but here he's just a noisemaker."

The guard picked up a bucket of water from the corridor floor with a thin sheet of ice on its surface and heaved the contents into Diran's cell.

"This is what works best on these kids."

Behind the bars, the drenched boy had rolled himself up in a ball.

"This should be enough for them to freeze to death, but the water itself freezes again in the early morning. So then their hair and eyelashes--and any other hair they've got--gets coated in ice. Some of them have lost fingers and toes to frostbite."

The guard laughed again.

Diran lay there curled up, but his eyes were shining with such intensity, it was as if he were trying to melt ice with the heat seething in his breast.

Kaim knew those eyes. They were the eyes of a warrior. And not just any warrior, but one on the very front line in a losing battle who watches for a chance to turn the battle in his favor.

And Kaim knew something else--that the system was beginning to unravel. It had kept the people in a state of suppression for eighty long years, ever since the revolution, but the very moment of its undoing had arrived.

* * *

The prison fires started that night, "Kaim! It's the coup!"

The guard came running to report the situation on the outside. Fires had been set throughout the city, he said.

This was, of course, the uprising that government intelligence had anticipated. Martial law was declared, and the government was mobilizing the entire police force and army. Word had come, too, that the ringleaders were already under arrest.

One element, however, had been wholly unanticipated.

The guard informed him, "The wind is strong tonight."

Fanned by unseasonable winds, the flames were racing through the city.

"On orders from the commissioner:  
we are _not_ to fight fires in the juvenile prison. Is that clear?  
Do _not_ engage in firefighting here."

In other words, no one would be coming to save the inmates.

"It can't be helped," said the guard. "The army and the fire department have all they can do to put out fires in the city and evacuate the people. They can't spare any men to protect this palce. And we've been ordered to join in the rescue effort in town."

"I guess that means we let the kids out."

This was a given, Kaim assumed. Left locked up in their cells, the young inmates would burn to death.

"Don't be ridiculous," the guard shot back. "These kids are all losers. We've gone to the trouble of locking them in here, and now we're suppose to let them out?"

"Are you serious?" Kaim replied.

"Are _you_ serious? I can't believe you'd say anything so stupid. I'm telling you, they're losers. We don't have time to save them, and we're certainly not going to let them run loose. The commissioner would never allow such a thing."

He obviously meant every word he was saying.

They were planning to let them die.

The flames were spreading quickly, and screams could be heard throughout the prison.

There was no time to appeal directly to the commissioners, and such an appeal would only end in failure, he was sure.

"Give me the cell keys," Kaim said.

"You're joking." the guard aughed.

There was only one thing to do.

Without a word, Kaim landed a punch in the guard's solar plexus.

The guard went down in a heap, and Kaim tore the clump of keys from his belt.

The first cell he opened was Diran's.

The boy came out looking confused.

"Are you one of us?" he asked Kaim. "Are you with the coup?"

"Not interested." he answered.

"So why are you letting us go?" Diran asked.

"Because I don't like dividing people up into 'winners' and 'losers.'"

"Thanks," Diran said.

Sporting a big grin, he took the keys from Kaim and turned away to start opening the other cells.

"I want you to come back," Kaim said to him from behind.

"What's that?"

"This is an emergency evacuation. When the sun comes up and the fires are out, I want you to come back here. You kids still haven't finished paying for your crimes."

"You must be kidding."

"Not at all," Kaim said. "If you kids run away, that'll just prove they're right--'Once a loser, always a loser.' Is that all right with you? Don't you want to show the ones who rule this country that they're wrong--that people can change?"

"But we'll never get another chance like this!"

"This coup is going to fail. You can run around all you want, but they're going to catch you in the end. You'll always be branded 'losers.' They might even kill you when they catch you."

Diran turned to stare at Kaim.

The prison was already surrounded by flames. Against this bright red backdrop, Diran's eyes still burned with the fighting spirit of a warrior.

"This country's political system can't last much longer. The day will come when you kids can leave prison with your heads held high. I absolutely believe that. And because I believe it, I don't want to see you die for nothing."

Kaim turned from Diran to pull the guard up from the floor.

"Come back after sunrise."

With this final admonition to Diran, Kaim hoisted the guard onto his back and trudged away.

* * *

These events occurred fifty years ago.

An air of freedom pervades the country now when Kaim visits fifty years later. True, he does catch glimpses of young toughs and juvenile delinquents where the nightlife thrives, but he feels this is just a sign of the free and easy times.

An old man calls out to him, "Are you a traveler?"

When Kaim nods the man says with a smile, "You're in luck. We're having a celebration in Revolution Square today. I hear the grand old man of the revolution is going to attend. It'll keep going all night long."

"A celebration?"

"That's right. I see you're too young to know what happened here in the old days. We had a coup fifty years ago on this very day. The coup itself was put down in one night, but the rebel troops set fires all through the city, so the rest of us were running around like crazy in all directions."

Fanned by the wind, the flames quickly enveloped the whole city, and a lot of the city people were stranded on a sandbar downwind.

"I was one of them. I had my pregnant wife and baby daughter with me, so I couldn't just dive into the river to escape. Before we knew it, sparks were raining down on the sandbar, and I figured we were done for--we'd all burn to death as soon as the dry grass caught fire."

Just as he was giving up hope, he says, a helping hand was extended to them from the most unlikely source.

"The kids from the juvenile prison came to help us. They were all skin and bones, and their prison uniforms were falling apart. The prison staff hardly fed them a thing but they pooled what little strength they had. They saved old folks and children from the sandbar, and they struggled to douse the fires that caught in the dry grass. I saw one boy carry a child across the river and collapse and die the second after he reached the other shore, and some of the ones who were fighting grass fires were overcome by the smoke and burned to death. They risked their lives to save us. Their own lives were not worth living, but those 'losers' risked their lives to save the lives of 'winners' like us."

When the sun came up and they could be sure that the fires were safely out, the young inmates went back to the juvenile prison.

"Yes, it's true. The place was an absolute hell for them, but they went back inside just the same. Not one of them took advantages of the confusion to run away, They played it strictly by the rules, wouldn't you say? We were really moved by their behavior, and people started saying that maybe these 'losers' had their good points after all. Maybe 'once a loser, always a loser' was wrong."

The whispers spread throughout the country, quietly but surely.

Soon the view emerged from that the treatment of juvenile prison inmates should be improved.

Another increasingly widely-held view was that society ought to welcome ex-inmates more warmly once they had paid for their crimes.

Finally, the change in attitude toward 'loser' children took the shape of dissatisfaction with the political system that had continued to foster such a dictatorship and, forty years ago, a second coup occurred.

"This next coup took the shape of a citizens' revolution that involved the masses, and for that reason it succeeded. That's how the form of government we have today got its start."

Listening to the old man's reminiscences, Kaim finds himself smiling and nodding again and again, deeply moved.

The last thing the old man tells him is the name of the hero who led the revolution and became the first president of the new government: Diran.

* * *

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Revolution Square. As fireworks are sent aloft and a brass band plays the rousing national anthem, the grand old man of the revolution takes to the stage amid the thunderous cheer and applauuse.

"Diran!"

"Diran!"

"Our Dirarn!"

Advanced in years now, and having long since removed himself from the center of politics. Diran still has that youthful, fiery gleam in his eyes.

There is no way for him to spot Kaim among the assembled throng. And even if he were to notice him, he could never imagine that this young man, unchanged from fifty years ago, was the temporary prison guard on that fateful night.

Still, the old hero proclaims, "People can change! There are no 'winners' or 'losers'!"

His words are greeted with cheers and fireworks, and the excitement of the celebration reaches its peak.

Kaim makes his way to a stand at the far end of the square and buys himself a cup of liquor.

He raises his cup to the hero of the revolution, who, from this distant vantage point, appears to him no larger than a speck.

He downs the drink in a single breath. When the intensely strong liquor has passed his throat, it leaves a sweet and mellow aftertaste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: If anyone of you visit TV Tropes, then you might understand the way I am describing of this scenario. The display and logic that is used in the society is what can be best described as "Social Darwinism in a shocking and disturbing social degree with violations of human rights," from the discrimination of "losers" (former criminals) to explicitly described abuse towards the inmates, made even worse that they are children and many of these abuses take place in the juvenile prison. Gods know, or Nobuo knows, what type of abuses they also give to the adult inmates in their prison, but it is probably to keep it left out for the best.


	31. The Queen's Loneliness

A thousand years can change everything, including the landscape.

Queen Ming surveys her capital from the palace window.

The panoramic view is like a great history book.

The volcano towering in the distance, which used to spew clouds of smoke, went dormant 700 years ago.

Once part of the sea, the inlet was reclaimed 500 years ago to become a village for the fisherfolk who spend their lives on the ocean.

The river once arched grandly across the landscape, but the deluge that occurred 300 years ago became the occasion for major flood control construction in the form of a perfectly straight channel. Where the river used to curve there is now an oxbow lake in which reeds grow in profusion, and the banks provide the people with a rich natural bounty.

Even the area that formerly was a barren, rock-strewn wasteland became a vast fruit-bearing garden thanks to the irrigation project that was undertaken 200 years ago.

The mountain that was the center of the people's religious faith was enveloped in sky-scorching flames 100 years ago. Formerly swathed in a thick green covering and seen as the home of the gods, the towering peak was transformed into a bare rock pile by a forest fire that burned for three days and nights. Almost everything that lived in the forest--birds and beasts of course, but many people, too--died in the flames. The people in the village below mourned the horrible transformation of their gods' adobe, but now, a hundred years later, the mountain is as green as ever. The people of the village and the people of the mountain still tell the story of the fire, but today's children can hardly imagine that the rich, green slopes were once charred and blackened.

Restored though it is to its original green lushness, of course, the mountain could well be enveloped in flames again--a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, or even tomorrow. Even if it should be charred bare again, however, trees would sprout anew, the birds and beasts and insects chased away by the fire would return to their homes, and, given enough time, the mountain would be covered in green as before. Such are the workings of nature.

Given enough time, dizzying stretches of time...

But no.

To become dizzy at the thought of vast stretches of time is a privilege of the ordinary folk--those who have no choice but to devote all their energies to living in the present.

How fortunate they are to be able to look back to the past of 1000 years ago like an old man telling a child a fairy tale, "Once upon a time, a long, long time ago..."

And how truly fortunate one would be to be able to tell the story of this country's future as a rosy dream the way children relate their own dreams of the future with flashing eyes, and to entrust that dream to the next reign!

Ming stands at the window like this every morning.

It is a special time of day for her, when she thinks about the livelihood of her subjects, watches for signs of enemy intrusions, and ponders measures she might wish to adopt.

She has done this every day without fail for the past thousand years.

The country has flourished.

The people no longer starve as they did when she first took the throne.

Future historians will no doubt sing the praises of Ming's thousand-year reign. She will be extolled as "The Thousand Year Old Queen," and her noble figure will be vividly engraved in people's memories.

Cherishing these memories of her, however, people will die before she does. The historians who praise her, too, instead of witnessing her reign to its end, will themselves become a part of history.

Ming has been queen for the past thousand years.

And probably will be for the next thousand years as well.

"Her Majesty is in excellent spirits again this morning, I trust."

She hears the voice behind her.

Her gaze still fixed on the streets of the city below, Ming answers, "You are early today."

"Not so early if Her Majesty herself is already observing the smoke rising from the cauldrons of her people."

She need not turn to ascertain the identity of the smiling face behind her. It belongs to Nagram, her senior minister. The smile is courtly, genial. But deep within the narrowed eyes, she knows, there resides a dark gleam.

"Today, I will accompany Her Majesty in the inspection of the troops."

"You?"

"'Yes, owing to a slight change in assignments today."

"Is that so?"

"I am hardly up to the task, but I will do my best if Her Majesty will allow me to serve her in this capacity. I beg her permission."

With her back still turned to Nagram, Ming gives a silent nod.

 _Ah yes,_ she thinks to herself with a bitter smile. _Their plan goes into action today._

Ming has sensed for a very long time that Nagram is up to no good. He apparently has seized command of certain units of the royal guard. Scattered throughout the city, too, his people are lying low, ready to set fires as soon as his orders come down.

No doubt about it: today, when the regular ceremonial inspection of the troops is scheduled to to take place, is the perfect day for a coup.

When Nagram leaves, Ming enters her office and summons Hannes, the most senior of her ministers, a true elder statesman and her most trusted confidant.

Hannes, who sports a luxurious beard, has served Ming for over forty years.

"Your Majesty, I understand Nagram was here earlier."

"Yes, apparently he is to accompany me to the inspection of the troops."

This is all she has to tell him.

Stroking his bushy beard, Hannes says, "That means they've run out of patience."

"I know," replies Ming. "I'm sure they can't wait to get started."

"What a fool Nagram is! He has absolutely no idea that Your Majesty has been letting him set his own trap."

"If he were smart enough to realize that, he would be taking at least two more years to make his preparations."

Then he would have much more power at his disposal. He could link up not just the royal guard but also the main body of the army and the police force. He could conspire with external enemies and arrange for them to invade just as the ceremonies were getting underway. Then his coup would probably succeed. If he had the long-range vision to include the wealthy merchants and the intelligentsia among his allies, he might even be able to mount a revolution that would overthrow the monarchy itself.

"That is what I would do if I were Nagram. As long as I was undertaking a coup, I would think about that much at least."

Hannes' smile could not hide the fact that all this talk of successful revolution was making him uncomfortable. "Her Majesty is unmatched by any enemy except one--Her Majesty herself!"

 _He may be right,_ Ming thinks.

If she had an enemy with an eternal life like hers who was willing to devote all the time needed to planning a revolution--be it a whole century or even two--the results would surely go beyond revolution and develop into a full-scale civil war.

Human lives, however, are limited in duration.

And because of this limitation, humans rush to achieve results before they are ready.

Nagram is one of them. If he could live two hundred years (to say nothing of a thousand), he would not be trying to take up arms at such an in-between point in time.

"Still," says Hannes, "I have to admit that Nagram has extended his forces far more successfully than I ever imagined. What have I been doing all this time? I am utterly ashamed of myself."

"Don't let it bother you, Hannes. Thanks to your 'inattention,' we will probably be able to smoke out many more rats."

Ming gives a satisfied chuckle.

Nor is this mere bravado on her part. They chose not to arrest Nagram at an earlier stage but allowed him to swim free for a while in order to take this opportunity to net the entire force of rebels both inside and outside the palace.

"Yes, I know," Hannes replies and goes on to explain the plan for crushing the coup.

His plans are impeccable. The coup ahs virtually no chance of succeeding. All they need to do is carry out a wholesale arrest of the rebel royal guard units that rise up in the palace and the partisans lurking in the city, and it will be some time before any more individuals with outsized ambitions show up again.

"This will be our first purge in fifteen years," Hannes remarks.

"Has it been that long?"

"It certainly has, Your Majesty. This fine beard of mine was jet black last time."

Hannes commanded the troops that put down the coup fifteen years ago. Loyal, courageous, and cool-headed, he is the ideal staff officer. Without a doubt, he is one of the very best military advisers Ming has had in over a thousand years on the throne.

"How selfish of me, Hannes. I should have let you retire years ago."

"That is out of the question, You Majesty. Serving you is my life. I am deeply honored to have this final opportunity to be of service."

True, not even this superb retainer could be with her through all eternity. In another five years--ten at the most--Hannes, like other loyal retainers of the past, would be laid to rest to the sound of military cannons.

It is always like this. Just as the ambitious ones rush to make their mark because they cannot live forever, the loyal ones in whom she can place her complete confidence stake their very lives on serving her because they cannot live forever. They carve their names in a single line of history, and then they depart from Ming for the rest of eternity.

Ming herself, though, goes on living.

Eternal youth. Immortality. So this is the dream of humanity, is it?

None of them knows the loneliness of eternal life.

When Hannes next addresses Ming, there is a new urgency in his voice. "About the troops that will quell the uprising... I will command the ones outside the palace. Do I have Her Majesty's permission to put command of the interior palace guards in the hands of my young protégé, Yan?"

"Ah, yes, Yan..."

"He may be young, but he is extremely capable. I have nurtured him carefully. I know he will serve Her Majesty splendidly after this old soldier is gone. I would like to give him the opportunity to distinguish himself in the current emergency."

Ming herself is fully aware of Yan's outstanding qualities. Young as he most certainly is, he far excels the other chamberlains in both the civil and military arts. He is undoubtedly the prime candidate to succeed Hannes as Ming's top general.

"What are Her Majesty's thoughts on the matter?"

"All right, then. Let him take charge."

"Her Majesty has my unbounded thanks! I am sure Yan himself will be deeply moved to learn that he has earned Her Majesty's confidence."

Hannes all but prostrates himself before her, an expression of relief on his face at having obtained Ming's permission.

"But still," he continues, "Her Majesty has been wary of Nagram for a very long time."

"True," she says.

"Meanwhile, this old soldier of yours had no idea whatever that Nagram might be planning a rebellion. I am deeply ashamed to confess it now, but to me he seemed the very model of loyalty. How is it that Her Majesty was able to see Nagram's actual disloyalty?"

Ming only smiles without answering his question.

"The same thing happened at the time of the coup fifteen years ago," Hannes continues. "The only reason that we were able to suppress the revolt before it even got started was that Her Majesty saw it coming before anyone else. Then as now I was blind to the traitor's plot."

"If you say so, Hannes..."

"Has Her Majesty forgotten?"

"Well, it was so long ago..."

Ming tries to evade the issue. There is no way she could have forgotten. The ringleader of the coup fifteen years ago was her most trusted retainer. When she first broached the subject to Hannes and the others, warning them to be on their guard against the man, all without exception insisted that he, above all, was beyond reproach. In the end, Ming's suspicion proved to be correct. She knew. However faithfully he carried out her orders, however warmly he swore his loyalty, she knew. These days, however, she has begun to wonder on occasion if that is something to be grateful for.

The landscape is not the only thing that changes in a thousand years.

People's hearts also change.

After numberless meetings and partings over the centuries, Ming has come to realize the fragility--the evanescence--of trust.

She no longer trusts anything in words.

Neither can she fully trust everything in action.

She knows by looking at a person's eyes.

That way she can tell everything--to a mysterious and disheartening degree.

In the eyes of all those who would bring harm to this country, without exception, there resides a dark gleam.

It is there in all of them: the man plotting a coup, the man secretly involved with foreign enemies, the man fattening his purse with heavy taxes wrung from the people, the female spy who seduces high ministers to extract state secrets, the man who accepts huge bribes from merchants eager for the glory of becoming an official purveyor to the royal household.

Neither their words not their deed give them away.

Often, the man himself has no idea of the misdeeds he will later commit.

But Ming can tell.

Only Ming, who has lived for a thousand years.

The silent voices tell her:

_Be careful of this man._

_Don't take your eyes off of that woman._

This was not the case in her youth. But having repeatedly tasted the bitter experience of betrayal, having been assailed by her own regrets and self-reproach, she has learned to doubt.

Ming can see what no one else can--that dark gleam deep in the eyes. This has enabled her to ward off a variety of disasters before they could start. The kingdom has managed to flourish because Ming has more often chose to doubt than to believe.

This is the best course for her to follow as queen.

It is, however, an infinitely lonely way to live.

* * *

Nagram's coup collapses in an instant. The rebel units of the royal guard, who draw their swords against Ming during the inspection of the troops in the plaza, become the prey of Yan and his men, who have been hiding around the perimeter. Meanwhile, the anti-rebel forces, under Hannes' command, pounce on Nagram's followers, who have been gathering to set fire to the city, and arrest them without resistance.

Poor Nagram grovels on the earth, begging for his life.

To him, Ming says only, "I grant you the right to die with honor."

A soldier lays a sword before Nagram.

Wordlessly, Ming conveys to Nagram that it is time for him to take his own life. She turns on her heels and returns to the palace under armed escort.

This will keep anyone from having thoughts of fomenting a rebellion--for a while at least.

The peace of the kingdom has been preserved, but it will not last forever. When the memory of Nagram's coup begins to fade--ten years from now, or twenty, or even a hundred--another man with ambition will emerge as has happened so many times before.

It is the role of the queen to accept this endlessly repeating cycle, Ming tells herself, sighing.

* * *

Ming is standing at the palace window, surveying the city streets below, when Yan enters the room.

"Your Majesty, I am here to report that Nagram successfully took his own life a short while ago."

"Oh? Did he dispatch himself with dignity?"

"He did. Traitor though he was, he died in a way befitting a commanding general."

"Return his body to his family with all due ceremony."

She turns and stares straight at Yan, whose spine stiffens under the onslaught of her gaze.

And then she sees it--without a doubt. That dark gleam flashes deep within his eyes for one fleeting instant.

 _So Yan is another one, is he?_ she thinks with a bitter smile.

Unable to fathom the meaning of her smile, Yan is at a loss for words.

"Thank you for all your efforts." Ming says to him. Suppressing a sigh, she turns to the window again.

* * *

The sky stretches overhead in an expanse of blue.

_The only thing unchanged for the past thousand years may be the blue of that sky._

_But still, I am the queen,_ Ming tells herself, meditating on her role.

_I am the one who rules this country and maintains the people's happiness._

She gazes long and hard at the sky, rising to her full, proud height.

"Oh, look, it's Queen Ming!"

A little boy in an alleyway below the castle spots Ming and begins waving at her wildly.

"Queen Ming! Queen Ming!"

A woman--the boy's mother, no doubt, charges out of a doorway and, bowing humbly to Ming, begins scolding the boy for his rude behavior.

Ming herself, however, waves back at him, a placid smile on her face.

Smiling joyfully at this unexpected response from Her Majesty the Queen, the boy starts jumping up and down, shouting, "Long live Queen Ming! Long live Queen Ming!"

Ming stares again at the sky above.

Unchanged though it has been for a thousand years,  
the blue of the sky penetrates more deeply into  
her eyes and her heart  
than it ever did in the days of her youth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: The ability of Ming being able to discover that one person is going to be her future traitor is fascinating, and may carry some plot-holes in the main game, especially with General Kakanas and all. However, the central plot of this dream of shadowy schemes is all too real, even with the types of crimes that are being described in the memory.
> 
> ===THE FOLLOWING IS FILLED WITH UNMARKED SPOILERS|DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE PLAYED OR WATCH THE ENTIRE GAME===
> 
> Now back to the plothole, why did Ming failed to reconsider that Kakanas is scheming behind her back at the start of the game and is being able to know this in the late parts of the story? If you remember back then, Ming is bound and can't cast any spells while Gongora is given her sadistic options with no routes for a third or alternate one; either she must forget her memories to save her people but reducing to a state where she must be reminded of what her role is on the mortal plane, do nothing and being forced to watch her people being killed and most likely loss respect over time, or being temporarily killed and knock out, with her country in shambles, her people lost and scattered and likely no longer respect her. She knows about Kakanas betrayal because, as she witnessed multiple times, humans betray other humans, while meeting with Gongora, who is an Immortal that she most likely haven't meet for a long time, didn't anticipate his betrayal over her. This is why Kakanas appears to have more control over her, as her personality appears to be reduced back when he is still a naïve woman in the mortal world. As soon as she is able to regain back her memories after the seal is broken, she is probably in the state of shock of how her country is being ruled on and most likely formulating a newer plan of setting back against Kakanas, remember that in this memory, Ming is also a schemer who ensures that anyone who goes against her will fail. It is also noted that Gongora's action also throws a wrench into her master plan for Numara, as losing her memory also means losing of the plan, her traitor-tracking skills and scheming abilities.
> 
> As for the reason why she is angry at Kakanas bombing her palace... Well, how do YOU feel if someone you hate or going against you decide to attempt destroying your home, especially a home that is incredibly significant to you?
> 
> Just food for thought.


	32. The Old Soldier's Will

Kaim spent the entire summer surrounded by a fence that towered over him.

He was trapped in a prisoner of war camp.

It was a terrible mistake--not his but the dimwitted, cowardly commander's. Kaim was a mercenary attached to the man's regiment. They were invading the enemy's main port city when the officer miscalculated at the end and the unit's line of retreat was cut off. While the troops were prepared for an all-or-nothing charge, the commander almost casually opted for surrender.

"Don't worry," he had said to his men before they were locked up.

"Whatever happens now, the ultimate victory in this war will be ours. Instead of making a stand and dying for nothing, we'll be much better off if we just quietly let them take us as prisoners of war. We'll be liberated right away in any case."

This made perfect sense.

But the officer completely misread the feelings of an enemy on the brink of defeat.

Having survived hundreds of battles, Kaim knew better than anyone how people felt toward prisoners of war after the hated enemy had taken the lives of their friends and loved ones and torched their hometowns.

To the members of his platoon at least, as they were preparing to enter the camp, he whispered,

"You'd better forget about any rosy pictures. This could be worse than the battlefield."

His words proved all too accurate.

Life in the POW camp was bitterly harsh. Day after day, the men were forced to do backbreaking labor on a diet of scraps. The sick and injured went untreated and were not even allowed to rest. To collapse on the job was to die. Indeed, several of the prisoners died not by collapsing on the job but from brutal beatings for minor infractions.

Everyone with access to the camp--both the soldiers assigned to guard duty and ordinary citizens with business there--looked upon the prisoners with hatred in their eyes. Some guards would wave swords at them and boat, "I can kill you bastards any time I like," and certain officers slaughtered one prisoner after another, disguising the killings as accidents.

Even as they tormented the prisoners, such men were suffering the deaths of their families and friends in the war, and spending their days in fear of the coming invasion. The camp was a place ruled by hatred and revenge, but also a place shrouded in uncertainty and fear of the day when the captives would become their captors. This tense, complicated atmosphere ate away at the spirits of all, friend and foe alike.

The horror of war lay not only in the mutual killing of enemies clashing on the battlefield but even more so in places such as this that were far from the front lines.

Kaim knew this with every bone in his body.

* * *

A month passed after the platoon entered the POW camp.

The enemy troops were thoroughly exhausted.

The fall of the capital was said to be imminent.

In spite or because of that, life in the camp was worse than ever.

The tasks assigned the prisoners were even crueler than before, and their diet, which was meager enough to begin with, fell below the level needed to sustain life.

The military guards bullied the prisoners as if for their own amusement, wounding them, and mistreating them with fatal consequences. All kinds of civilians did their part, too, hurling human waste over the fence into the camp. And even if secret stashes of food might be left for them, none of the prisoners dared eat them for fear they might be poisoned.

Hatred climbed to unseen heights.

To one prisoner who moaned "Why are you doing this to us?", a guard spat out the answer, "It's just what your country is doing to us."

And it was true.

All the young men of the enemy country were being sent into battle, where most of them were being killed. Whole towns had been burned down and transformed into rubble.

While the soldiers assigned to guard duty knew that defeat in the war itself was certain, they continued to be victors where the POWs were concerned.

And while the captured soldiers believed in the victory of their fatherland and waited for the da when their comrades would rescue them, they continued to be the vanquished among victors.

The moans of the POWs could be heard throughout the camp:

"When is the war going to end?"

"The war doesn't have to end. Just let them get us out of here!"

"Have we been abandoned by the fatherland?"

Kaim kept offering the same advice to them again and again:

"Be patient," he would say, "Don't give up hope."

Kaim knew everything there was to know about war, and so he realized what was happening now. The fatherland's supreme commanders were trying to bring down the capital first and leaving the fall of this military port city for later. The POWs had, in fact, been abandoned.

The commander in chief would no doubt say, "For the sake of a great victory, we cannot let ourselves be concerned about a small setback."

And he would be right.

But precisely because he would be right, Kaim could not convey this to the prisoners, who firmly believed that their side was trying their best to rescue them.

One POW after another made plans to escape, and for every one of those there was an informant who exposed his plan to the guards.

Both types of prisoner had the same thing in mind: to save himself alone. No one could be trusted. There were even some "informants" who made phony escape stories about perfectly innocent men just to put themselves in a little better position with the guards. The only thing awaiting such traitors when the war finally ended would be the revenge of their comrades. As much as they understood this, all they could do was ingratiate themselves with the guards so as to secure their momentary safety.

The fence was not the only thing surrounding the POWs. It was not just their bodies but their minds that had been taken captive. In addition to the ones who died from illness and injury were increasing numbers of those who ended their own lives after a period of mental suffering.

_Be patient._

_Don't give up hope._

Kaim's words gradually ceased to make an impression on anyone.

* * *

After the men had been prisoners of war for two months, a new guard took charge of Kaim's barrack.

In place of the young warrior who had been guarding them came an old soldier.

His name is Jemii.

When he introduced himself to the men, he remarked with a grim smile,

"Things must be getting pretty desperate if they're calling up an old goat like me."

The young guard had been sent to the front lines. This probably meant that the battle for the capital had entered its final phase.

"I tell you, this war is almost over. In another month, you young fellows will be on the other side of the fence, and we'll be locked in here. Our positions will be completely reversed."

Jemii needed no prompting from the POWs, and his voice contained none of the hate-filled agitation of the young guard's.

"All you fellows have to do is hang in there a little longer, be patient, and not give up hope."

His words were almost identical to Kaim's, which meant that Jemii, like Kaim, had experienced many a battle over the years.

"We may be in different positions, but deep down we're the same. You men are unarmed prisoners, and we'll be under your control as soon as you come to occupy the country. I'm what you will be tomorrow, and you're what I will be tomorrow. I don't know how long we're going to go on like this, but if you stop and think about it, isn't it stupid for us to keep hating each other and snarling at each other? Let's at least try to get along."

He twisted his wrinkled face into a big grin and laughed aloud.

His smile deeply affected the mentally and physically exhausted men.

Before they knew it, they were smiling, too. This was the first carefree smile that any of them had managed since their capture, or, rather, since their time on the battlefield.

* * *

Jemii's kindness was not limited to words. Of course, the change of a single guard was not enough to substantially improve the prisoners' treatment. The hard labor and meager food were the same as before. But Jemii would speak to them with real feeling.

"Sorry for working you so hard, but there aren't any young men left in this town to do the muscle work. We're not making you do these jobs to punish or discipline you but because the town needs your help with these construction projects."

"I'm sorry we can't give you anything decent to eat. I really am. But everybody outside the fence is starving, too. We're all in this together, so try to put up with it."

Jemii would try to order somewhat easier jobs for prisoners who had taken ill, and he would sneak them extra food. That is the kind of guard he was.

The prisoners started calling him "Uncle Jemii," and would even joke around with him sometimes.

"We'd be way better off if the guards were like you, Uncle Jemii," said one prisoner, to which Jemii nodded sadly.

"I'll tell you what, Uncle Jemii," said another prisoner. "If I had known that there were people like you in this country, I never would have volunteered. I'm not forgetting my place as a POW, but let me shake your hand once."

Jemii allowed himself the faintest of smiles at this and gave the man his hand.

* * *

"You know something, Kaim..." Jemii said, sitting down beside Kaim during a break in the heavy lifting.

It was a clear, beautiful day, but the sunlight pouring down on them had lost its midsummer glare. The season was shifting to autumn.

"I'd say you're a little different from these other young prisoners."

"Am I?"

"I know you've seen your share of battles. I can smell it on you."

Kaim's only reply to Jemii was a strained smile. Jemii seemed to have known what Kaim's response to his remark would be, and he wore the same kind of smile as he carried on the conversation.

"Why haven't you escaped? It would be easy for a man like you to break through the flimsy security they have here."

"You give me too much credit."

"You could make it by yourself, but taking everybody with you would be tough. Is that why you stayed?"

Kaim gave him another strained smile, saying nothing.

Jemii was right. If he decided to escape on his own, it would be easy for him to climb over the fence. If, however, he managed to gain his freedom, the prisoners he left behind would be punished or, at the very least, would have to live with increasingly harsh security measures. The young soldiers abandoned in the camp would feel only despair.

If he was going to escape, it would have to mean getting everyone over the fence. Most of the others, however, were so wasted away that they were beginning to lose even the strength to go on living. Men like that could only be a drag on his own flight to freedom.

"You're a kind-hearted fellow, aren't you?" Jemii said.

"And you're a smart one, too, I'll bet."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Any soldier with as much experience as you has already seen the handwriting on the wall. The war is over. Another three days, maybe a week, and our side is going to announce a total surrender. Right now, we're just making our last stand out of sheer stubbornness. The second the war ends, you prisoners will go free, and we'll take your place."s

"Yes. And?"

"It'll just be a little longer. Really, all you have to do is hold on a little longer. you must know that as well as I do. So you're probably not even thinking of making the effort to escape."

When Kaim nodded, Jemii smiled and said, "That's fine. I'm just as fed up as you are with all the pointless fighting and hatred."

He looked up at the autumn sky, his profile marked by a number of deep wrinkles. On closer inspection, Kaim realized that some of those wrinkles were scars left by sword cuts.

"Let me tell you something, Kaim."

"All right."

"Our country doesn't have the strength left to make it through another hard winter. I knew that when summer was still here."

"I see..."

"I just wish we had given up sooner. Then there wouldn't have been so many young men killed in battle, and so many towns burned."

Jemii released a deep sigh and added, "When this war is over, we're going to have to do whatever your country tells us to do. We can't complain if were enslaved or tortured to death by the young men who are now our prisoners of war."

Kaim could not assure him that would never happen.

As a mercenary, he would just go off seeking new employment when this war ended, but this was not true of the other prisoners of war. As the conquerors, the would now have peace. They would return to the lives they led before. But how many among them would be able to treat the vanquished people with kindness and respect?

"I think you'll know what I mean, Kaim, when I say you can be as cruel as you like to us old folks when the fighting ends, but please, I'm begging you, be decent to the young men and to the women and to the children. Don't do anything to them that will make them hate your country. Otherwise, there'll just be another war sometime in the future. Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, maybe even a hundred years from now. I don't want any more of this. Countries fighting each other, people hating each other..."

It happened at that very moment.

The violent ringing of a bell began to echo throughout the camp. It was the bell in the watchtower, signaling an emergency meeting of the guards.

"Oh, well, gotta go," Hemii said, standing up. "Don't bother going back to work right away. Tell the other fellows everybody can have a little break."

He took a few steps before turning to say to Kaim with a smile, "You know, if we weren't enemies, I would've liked to have a drink with you sometime."

That was the last Kaim saw of Jemii as a guard.

* * *

The sun was overhead when Jemii left, but he did not come back even after it had begun sinking in the west.

The next time someone came into the enclosure it was to the cheers of the POWs welcoming the arrival of their country men.

"You're going to be all right now, men! The war is over! It's a huge victory for our side!"

Jemii's country had agreed to a total surrender.

The guards assembled in the tower were stripped of their weapons, and anyone who resisted was killed on the spot.

"Get a move on there! Hurry up!"

The soldiers who, until a short time ago, had ruled the camp were herded into the enclosure with whips and under the threat of drawn swords.

The POWs, who until only moments ago had been under their rule, now lined up to stare at their former guards, and before anyone knew it, the guards were being cursed and stoned.

Hands tied, the soldiers could not ward off the stones, and before long they were drenched in blood.

Jemii was among them.

He stared at Kaim, blood gushing from his forehead. HIs eyes showed no hatred or resentment. He simply gave Kaim a little nod, looking straight at him as if to say, Remember what I asked you to do.

Kaim shouted to the men surrounding these new prisoners, "Stop it! Stop it! They've surrendered! Leave them alone!"

But, liberated from the fear of death and from days of humiliation, his young comrades, wild-eyed and screaming like animals, went on stoning their former guards.

"Can't you see who this is? It's Uncle Jemii! Stop it!"

One of the soldiers gave him a contemptuous snort and all but spit out the words, "The old bastard was just sucking up to us for when our side won."

Another soldier--the young man who had asked to shake Jemii's hand that day--shouted, "He might act like a good guy, but an enemy's an enemy! And besides, he's just some old geezer from a country we pounded into the dirt." He threw another stone at Jemii.

Kaim's shouts did no good. He started grabbing hands that were readying to hurl stones and smashing people in the face, but no one would listen to him.

The commander of the troops that had galloped to the rescue just grinned and said, "Good! Good! Get it out of your system!" and he handed swords to the unarmed men.

"Kill them all, and raise some victory cries while you're at it! Think of the humiliation you endured as prisoners. Now's the time to get even!"

"No, stop it!" Kaim shouted. "The war is over!"

"Wait, I know you. You're a mercenary.

You're just spouting a lot of nonsense. A few good sword thrusts could shut that mouth of yours!"

The commander's aides took this as a signal to surround Kaim.

"Don't waste your time on him, men! Warriors of our beloved fatherland! Kill these soldiers first, and then we can attack the town. Set fires! Take the women! We won this war! This town, this country, everything belongs to us now!"

The commander laughed aloud, but in the next moment, his smile turned into a grimace. His aides were falling to the ground. Kaim had grabbed a sword from one of them, and now it flashed in his hand.

"Traitor! Somebody take him down!"

Kaim swung around and started for Jemii.

But it was too late.

The soldiers were already slashing wildly at the former guards, who had no means to defend themselves.

Standing amid the hellish scene of human butchery, Kaim saw it happen.

The old soldier, who had been kind because he knew all too well the link between war and hatred, fell to the ground without uttering a word, a hateful blade thrust into his back.

* * *

Kaim made a break for the camp gate.

He ran for all he was worth, a soundless roar reverberating inside him.

Why did people have to hate each other so?

Why did people have to fight each other so?

And why was it impossible for people to stop fighting and stop hating?

He did not know the answers to these questions.

Saddened and frustrated by his own incomprehension, Kaim ran at full speed through the rubble of the town.

* * *

A hundred years pass by.

"This is it, Kaim," the commander says with a smile. "I am enormously grateful for the magnificent job you've done. You can name your own reward when this war is over."

The last great offensive is about to begin.

This should bring the war to a close.

It has taken a hundred years.

After all these long, long years as a vassal state, the country that lost the war the year Kaim was a prisoner has raised its banner against the ruling power under which it endured such suffering in the last war.

The defeated country has spent a hundred years nurturing its hatred for the ruling power, passing the hatred down from parent to child to grandchild. The country that won the war a hundred years ago was too filled with a ruler's arrogance and insensitivity to notice what was happening. The only things that it has handed down from parent to child to grandchild are the scorn and contempt for the "inferior country" under its sway.

This war ends with almost disappointing ease.

The results are the exact opposite of the war a hundred years earlier.

No one knows on which side the goddess of victory will smile if yet another war occurs a hundred years from now.

"All right, Kaim, name your reward."

Kaim answers the commander's question softly: "I don't need a thing."

"Why not? It's true that you're a mercenary, but you far outdid the regular troops. Our country wants to show its appreciation for your efforts."

"If that's how you really feel, I'd like you to promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't make your enemy hate you."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about treating the people of the defeated country with kindness and respect."

A shocked expression on his face, the commander laughs and says, "Aren't _you_ the softhearted one!"

Kaim, however, is deadly serious.

"This is the legacy an old man from your own country left me a hundred years ago."

"Enough," says the commander, still looking shocked. "Dismissed."

Kaim himself has no hope that Jemii's legacy will be fulfilled. The hundred-year journey he has taken since that fateful day in the camp has shown him only the selfishness and stupidity of the human race. It will be the same from here on out as well. Indeed, nothing has changed since long before he met Jemii.

And yet.

Back at his post, Kiam grips his sword and holds his breath.

It will change someday.

They will see someday.

_I want to believe that._

_Unless I believe it, I can't go on with my endless journey._

_You know what I mean, don't you, Uncle Jemii?_

Eyes closed, he can see Jemii's face smiling sadly.

The order goes out to the entire assembled force: "Charge!"

Within the rising clouds of dust, Kaim grips his sword and starts to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Notably, this memory details of the vicious, never-ending cycle of revenge. To put it simply, you did something bad to another person, they hate you for it. If they are in turn of power against their aggressor, they will also do something bad towards them and they will hate them. Then the offended party will, uh, "re-offend" the other party and the "re-offended" party will also "re-offend" the other offended party. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseam and you will get a very bloody and depressing history of conflict between two parties that will be extremely difficult to break apart unless either party forgives in the later stages or one of them dies, as numerous times in actual, real-life history attests.


	33. EPILOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is explicitly not part of the canonical accounts, but rather on what happens to the three main Immortals after enduring their existence up to the present day, where the game's events take place. This is how I imagine things went through, between their past and the present.

Kaim's Epilogue:

_For years, Kaim continues to walk around the world, where he continues his work as a mercenary while his feats slowly become known far and wide. For years, Kaim continues to experience the love and tragedy, relationships and breakups, horrors and reliefs and beautiful and ugly sides of humanity and mortality. Eventually, he reaches into a small town in what is now known as the Gohtzan Empire, where he eventually tries to settle down and help defending its townspeople from dangerous beasts until he meets his newest, and most adored, lover; Sarah Sisulart. Together, they fell in love and stayed in the town, living in a beautifully decorated and constructed mansion in the outskirts of the town, where they both had a beautiful daughter named Lirum in their care and live peaceful days in tranquility._

_However, tragedy struck when Lirum jumps off a cliff in one fateful day in front of her parents, causing great grief towards them. Little by little, the lovely couple made little appearances and appear distant from each other, still quietly grieving over the loss of their daughter. Eventually, one day, both disappear from the town, leaving behind the mansion abandoned while the townsfolk decided to take care of it in their memory._

_Years later, Kaim re-emerges from the shadows since the tragedy of Lirum, with Sarah nowhere by his side. He continues his job as a mercenary, lending hand in the war efforts, skirmishes and battles of countries and powers, as if back to his normal self. He is now reluctant and reclusive, never talking to his subordinates excluding with official instructions and information from their commanders. What would be the fate of his wife Sarah is left ambiguous, and slowly fading in the memories of the people._

Seth's Epilogue:

_For the first time in a thousand years, Seth quietly retires from the pirate world, taking time to take care of Sed after the death of Aneira. Though Sed still has the fire and passion of being a pirate like his mother, Seth could only teach him the basics and maintenance of their newest ship. Before he could reach mid-teens, Seth disappears from his life, leaving Sed to be taken care by one of Seth's most trusted crew member._

_Several years later, a woman fitting the description of Seth Balmore is sighted in the growing kingdom of Urha, serving as a commander of one of its platoons... or so they thought as she believes to just happen to bear her name and appearance, while claiming to be working with Urha as she is a mercenary. Regardless, people still believe that they can smell the salty air from her, putting doubt of whether she is a person who happens to be living in one of the coastal towns with identical appearance, a copycat trying to live with her fame, or perhaps truly the legendary pirate Seth Balmore trying to live a normal life._

Ming's Epilogue:

_Her Majesty Queen Ming Numara continue to rule her country, Numara, for several more years, keeping eye on her people with care and sound judgement while at the same time, silently and masterfully taking out too-ambitious humans who are trying to take her out, sabotage her reign or exploit and cause misery to her people. Following the tragic betrayal of Yan, Ming appoints Kakanas as her failed officer's replacement, while still finding the same dark gleam in his eyes._

_Sometime prior before the advent of the Magic-Industrial Revolution, a group of powerful beasts known as Arthrosaurus invade a commercial fishing district in Numara, where dozens of civilians and armed men died from its rampage. Ming Numara is suspiciously absent in the scene and people slowly begin to doubt of her efforts. Suddenly, a powerful beam of magic energy emerges from Her Majesty's balcony, targeting on the Arthrosaurus pack and turning them to stone. After the event, Queen Ming resumes her regular activities, with her action seen in a more positive and heroic light among the general populace._

_Conspiracy theorists in Numara noted that her behavior is far more submissive and quieter than her previous appearances, as well as noted presence of emphasis in military prowess and activities in the country. Although official accounts stated that Ming approves of these developments, theorists were secretly whispering in their back that it could actually be from someone else. Whatever it is, Numarans continue to adore with Her Majesty and respect her wishes._

* * *

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